The show’s guest in this episode is Dr. Lulu. She is a former Lt. Col and Commander in the U.S. Air Force, CEO of Dr. Lulu’s Coaching & Consulting Lounge and President of Dr. Lulu’s Angel’s Haven, a nonprofit organization helping create safe spaces for (homeless) LGBTQ youth. A multiple award-winning Queer, Nigerian-born pediatrician, gender and sexuality coach, and LGBTQ+ educator. She is also the chief host of Moms 4 Trans Kids Podcast.
She is a mother of 3, her eldest is a transgender young adult woman.  She is a Youth Suicide Prevention Activist and former host of Suicide Pages, and The Pride Corner podcasts.

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Listen to the podcast here

Navigating Gender Diversity with Dr. Lulu

Hi. My name is Mel Rutherford. I’m McMaster University’s first transgender department chair, and I’m the host of the experimental leader podcast. I’ve been thinking recently about challenges and opportunities in my own leadership and I and I was reflecting on the fact that leaders often get the advice to show vulnerability, to come into leadership with some vulnerability, show a little bit about yourself. This makes a lot of sense when, when the leader is in a position of power, makes them more accessible, makes them more human, lets people have access to them more. But then I was thinking, what about the situation where the leader themselves is a member of a vulnerable minority? What if the leader themselves as trans, and I kind of got up on this, in this situation of thinking my, you know, bringing myself forward and making myself vulnerable. I offered to lead a conversation in my department about transgender representation in film, and I went into this meeting at I was the discussant, I was the facilitator, and I was the chair of the department, so there was no one there in the meeting really to to save me. When the meeting got derailed, I came in prepared to talk about trans representation in film. Turned out people wanted to talk about whether transgendered women should be allowed to compete in sports. I wasn’t prepared to discuss that. I lost control of the meeting. It was a Zoom meeting, so eventually I muted myself, and then later I turned the camera off, and then later I left the meeting. So I just wanted to say, yes, leaders should show up as vulnerable, but make sure you have allies who have the skill and the authority to help you if, if you lose control of a situation like that. So that was my thinking about my experiences in my leadership position.

We’ve got a guest today. Today’s guest is Dr. Lulu. Dr. Lulu is the CEO of Dr. Lulus, coaching and consulting lounge, the president of Dr. Lulu Angel Haven, a nonprofit organization help that helps create safe space for homeless, LGBTQ youth. Dr. Lulu is the host of moms for trans kids podcast, the author of multiple best selling books, including how to teach your children about racism and the upcoming about your black transgender child. Dr. Lulu is a pediatrician and a former lieutenant colonel and commander in the US Air Force.

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Welcome to our show, Dr. Lulu,

Hi! I always, always wonder, Is that me? Time never fails…

There’s such a list of accomplishments and interests and service to the world. Thank you for being here today.

Yes, I definitely represent the non monolithic side of mankind. Yes, I own every single intersectional identity. I own every last one.

You do, yes, yes. I want to start asking, what’s it like raising black kids and a trans kid in in Texas, you’re in Texas, are you not?

Well? I mean, they’re raised now,

Okay.

Now, what I like to say is, I have three children, one of whom is trans, and the other two, I am socializing as males. I’m very intentional about my words these days. As a pediatrician, I tell my parents, who are having children, you’re having a child, you’re having a baby. And when they want to know what sex is the baby, I said, I don’t know. I know what the genitalia is. And let us say what. Let’s just kind of call a spade a spade. The truth is, what we’re doing is assigning a genital identity to our children. That’s what it is, and as a child grows up, the child tells us what their gender identity is. We can’t confuse the two. If only we had all known these things when I was in medical school, if only. We’ve known these things whenever, but you know what? In Nigeria, what they say is, whenever you wake up, is your morning, so it’s my morning, and I’m here to teach as much as I can, so that people who want to learn will learn, but you won’t say you didn’t hear it anymore. So it has been, I think, less of a challenge than I thought it was going to be. I think everything in life, our brain tends to magnify. Oh, my God, it’s really hard. It’s the first is the default. But when you look closely, it’s not harder to raise any one child than the other. Yeah, just the child you’re given. Yeah. And so within the realms of feeding the child breast home, and it’s the same. We make gender an issue, and then it becomes an issue to say the kids need the same thing. They want to play in the sandbox. They want to come home and have a bed to sleep.

So yeah, yeah. Thank you. Thanks for that, that that explanation and that distinction, one of the things I’m curious about is to what extent you and your kids have collaborated with these endeavors, and what to what extent have your kids informed you when you’ve created these endeavors?

What endeavor do you mean in particular?

So your podcast, your books, that your coaching, and your Angels Haven organization.

I think parenting, parenting is a co creative process. It’s like coaching. I can’t truly coach my clients unless my client wants to be coached. I can’t truly parent my kid unless my kid wants to be parented. And I said that, and I say that with my full chest, like we say in Nigeria, it’s co creative. And if you don’t believe me, try to get your toddler to eat the spinach. Want to eat the spinach? You cannot make up. You’re going to have a big mess. There’s going to be throw up, there’s going to be attitude and temper tantrums. So I believe that raising my kids has been a co creative process. That said when it comes to my business. My business actually came before my children. I became a physician when I was 22 so that preceded my kids. We got divorced when the children were young, and then from that point, they played a role in the sense that I had to now balance single motherhood and what I’m doing, but I also raised them to realize that this is what Mommy has to do, and you can support me or you cannot, which they have always supported me. So when I was writing my first book, I said, Okay, so who wants to be on the cover of my book? And literally, everyone’s like, no, not me. Let’s take that one. I take that one. And so my baby was young, and I was like, okay, so you’re going to be on the cover of the book. And then the book became a bestseller. Then the other two were like, mom, so about the cover of the book, I’m like, so that is an example of how they co create with me when I joined, when I was talking about joining the Air Force after the divorce with their dad from their dad. I didn’t think about the military. I just wanted to leave the I just wanted to leave my practice and my My middle child said mom wasn’t grandpa in the Air Force. I said, Yes. And he was like, Well, you know, you can join the Air Force. I said, No, I can’t. He’s like, I mean, maybe you can. And I was like, well, maybe I can. Okay, so why don’t you check the army, you check the Navy, you check the Marines, and I’ll check the Air Force. Literally, we did that as an exercise that morning to figure out what was the age limit to join. And it turned out that the Air Force was 48 and I was it was 42 and I was turning 42 that March, and I didn’t want to join the army, and the Navy was too young, and the Marines was going to be too hard. So I just said, okay, so it’s the effort. So we kind of CO created some of those things that way. When my eldest was graduating from college, from Stanford, and during the in 2020 they announced I was making the announcement of the about the award she was going to receive. And the the gentleman kept saying, they this, and they that, and they this, and they that. I was like, Wait, son, I thought you were the only one getting the award. Who are all these people this money talking about? And my middle child said, Mom, I think it’s because x is non binary. I was like, what is what is non binary? What is that? So in that regard, she was outed by her middle sibling, and that’s how I came into the picture. And I asked my then wife. I was like, What’s non binary? She was like, I don’t know. That’s your child. I said, I don’t know. We don’t know what non binary is. So non binary came into my life four years ago, wow. And then I was still trying to grapple with that, and I got divorced from my ex wife at the end of Covid, at the end of 2021 I think, and then 2022 Christmas, my kid calls me, and I’m thinking, it’s gonna be merry Christmas, right? And he’s like, Mom, I’m trans, and then Merry Christmas. So the point I’m trying to make is I found out two years ago, not even two years ago, but as a parent and as a queer person and as a child, who told my father when I was 16 that I liked boys and I liked girls. I had to ask myself, how long does it take to support your child?

So at that point, when you found out, did you start having open conversations with your child? Or how did you navigate those conversations?

So that’s what I’m saying. I had to ask myself the question, because what I tell the parents that I coach is the child is not the one that needs to be accepted. You don’t ever need to accept your child. You need to accept yourself and your child has always been who they are. Now that I know what being transgender is, I know that a child has always been trans. Mm, we miss assigned a gender and privacy. That’s why I started. I started there. So when parents accept their responsibility of being the one to assign the right gender and assigning a genital identity instead, then it’s easier for us to understand that we were the ones that Miss assigned to begin with. And so the child has never not been who they are. We have been the ones that have needed to transition, if that makes sense, or transform, or accept, or whatever, we are the ones that need to do that. And so the resistance that we see today is parents not wanting to be, no, I don’t want to be a parent of a trans kid, as opposed to, no, my kid is not trans. No, it’s I have a problem, and so I being a queer person. I was like, Wait, I thought you were just gay. I said I thought you were just gay. I thought it was gay because that’s what I had asked God. I said, God, please don’t make my child be gay all the features. I was like, Okay, please. And so I was like, I thought you were just gay. Okay, God, I’ll take the gay parents. We start negotiating, you know, like, okay, gay is not so bad after all. Yeah, yeah. So, of course, the the first question, which was, I now know, in hindsight, was an inappropriate question was, are you sure? But I say it’s in a inappropriate tongue and cheek, because I know almost every parent asks that question, so I want to normalize the fact that parents ask, Are you sure for multiple reasons? Because we don’t want it to be true, we don’t want our children to suffer, we don’t want our kids to be outed, we don’t want our kids to be canceled. We don’t want the government coming for our kids. We don’t want all those things. So what we want is, we want to make sure that the child is not we almost want the child to say, Yeah, I’m not sure. Then we’d be like, Okay, who? Okay, there’s a chance that this may not be real,

So what advice would you give to a parent for whom this information is new, somebody who just heard about this for the first time?

Everything I just said. Be who you are. Yeah, be yourself. Have a normal reaction. It is a normal reaction. I want to normalize the fact that parents are not only the most important, they are also the most influential people in their kids lives. So what they think and what they say and what they do matters. So also is what they know. And so I want them to be the natural reaction is, are you sure? So, yes, be have that natural reaction. However, comma, let’s rewind a little bit. Let’s rewind to the point before you ever had a child. What were your thoughts about the queer community? What did you think about transgender people you see because if you were like me, and you thought they were weird and cuckoo and all the things that the world tells us, you’re going to have a harder road when your child tells you that they’re transgender. Yeah, so when I say rewind, I mean, let’s go back to before you have a child, I need you to expect that possibly. This child might be gay, might be might be a lesbian, and start working with that already, so that when the child tells you who they are at the age of two, because as young as the age of two, kids know their gender identity. I know this position, do they tell you they might not, depending on what we are saying around them, because we’re very influential. But the first knowledge of gender identity is a very, very young age. Why do I say that a cis gender boy at the age of two would tell you I’m a boy? Yeah, a cis gender girl at the age of two, at the age of 18 months, will tell you I’m a girl. And so the problem there is, what are we feeding the non binary child? What are we feeding the transgender child, to make them go along until at one point they can go along no more. Yeah, that’s what I tell the parents to do. Go back before you ever have a child, and ask yourself, What if this child was trans? What would I do?

Interesting. Yeah, thanks. How did, um, how did serving in in the military go with parenting? Were you? Were you were your kids at home at that time? Or, how did that work?

I joined the gear force in 2012 Oh, got married to my ex wife in 2012 so we did everything the year it was, it was marriage equality was made, you know, legal. We did. We got married that year. I joined the f was that August. We got married in June, and joined the f was that August? Um, and my kids were, I don’t know, 1311, and seven. Okay, so they were still young and they were just children, which is what I choose to say these days, as opposed to boys and girls trying to normalize the fact that we truly do not know the gender identity of our kids. And so my second TEDx talk. My third TEDx talk is titled, let the children lead as well. We parent as students. So parenting as students, I want us to be students of our children, because that’s true. If a child has allergy to peanuts, there’s only one way to know. You gotta feed the child peanuts, and the child will show you that they are looking to peanuts. So same thing. So let’s become students of our children in that regard. I mean, you’re going to be a parent, you’re going to feed your kid, right? You’re going to do all the nurturing. But when it comes to certain things, because of the speed at which this is happening, 52% of children today, age 13 to 713, to 24 do not identify as straight. We need to know that over half of the kids today, and it’s not a fad. It’s the fact that what you see is easier for you to believe. So they see more queer kids now. So it’s easier for them to say, well, you know, I’m actually also queer, which is what happened in 2012 once the marriage equality was passed. If you look at the graph, the number of the percentage of LGBT people in in America went up this way, because that’s what happened. So raising the children as a military person was just like me going to work every day, except I wore a uniform. It was just the same thing as me going to see patients in my own practice that I had every day. It wasn’t different, except we lived in San Antonio, Texas, and I was commander and I but I still went to see patients. It was still regular. It didn’t affect anything. And at that point in time, I just still had suspicions. I think this kid is gay, so that was at that point.

So at what point did you know that you needed to work with other physicians to empower physicians to support LGBTQ patients? When did that become a calling for you?

I think maybe when I, when I actually got busy doing the work was after my child shared with me that she she went to, I think it was parenthood, Planned Parenthood, and came back and was just like in pieces, because she said, you know, they just, they just didn’t The doctor didn’t know anything, the noise, all the questions, and treating her like a sideshow at the circus and all the things. And then she was just like, and why is that person? And parenthood. So I realized, well, when I was in medical school, they told us anything LGBT was was mental illness, so I had to go back and say, You know what? I didn’t know anything either. I learned everything from my child. I learned everything when I became a parent of a trans child, a gender diverse child. So I said, You know what, if I didn’t know these things, these people don’t also know. So how can I best serve a community who are already under attack? And so that’s why one of the things I say is, while our old says, first, do no harm. Doctor Lulu says, First do no further harm, because this community as a queer, as a queer nation, has been harmed by the medical community for a long time. So why do we start becoming better, more effective allies. Not only is it best for your patient, it’s also best for your practice, because if one patient who’s trans or who’s LGBT comes and feels affirmed and seen and treated well in your practice, they’re going to tell their friends. It’s going to affect your bottom line. It’s going to put you in the black, because this leaves clues. They will say, Oh, my God, y’all Guess what? This doctor is dope, yeah. So it was a very easy decision for me, being a physician, doctors. Listen to doctors. Yeah, just what we do. So I’m like, okay, and then I happen to be a queer mom who is also a pediatrician, I was like, God could not have created my life better. Oh, my goddess, which is I like to say my my god is a female. She’s a black, immigrant woman like me. So my goddess could not have been more correct when, when she was creating me, because she put all the right identities in this one person and black, I’m a female, I’m an immigrant, I’m a speaker, I’m a little bit more than smart, right? I’m a little bit of this and a little bit so I’m like, Okay, how can I put all these things together? Wait, I can also help organizations support parents, because I know that they’re coming for my kid means they’re coming for me. Yeah. So while most organizations like to focus on the the LGBT person, I insist that the parents are very, very, very, very influential in their kids life. So the Parents also need support, because if the mother is threatened, if my life is threatened, my kid is not going to do well. So that’s kind of how come I have the three branches of my practice. The Pride corner is the one that helps families navigate the journey the allies in white coats helps doctors become more effective. And then the ABC or ally bridge connection program works with organizations to help them support parents and, by default, families of LGBT kids, not just a queer person.

That’s great. So what are you working on now?

I actually, just before this interview, I was doing my resources page of my book. Of the book called about about your black transgender child. So I’m trying to get that book done, because I have a meeting with my editor next week. Okay, the resources page, I’m done with the book. The the manuscript is done.

Do we know when that’s coming out?

I hope, I hope, by October. But it’s also taken me two years to write, because I’ve been in this tailspin of like, do I really do? Do I know what I’m saying? Do I know what I’m doing with anybody read it? I mean, one called it’s called invited in, based on my second TED Talk. It’s called invited in, how to become the parent your LGBT child needs. And that book, believe it or not, is still waiting for me to finish it completely, because the American Academy of Pediatrics wants to publish it. But I’m here like, oh my god, do I know what I’m writing? Do I know what I’m doing, or what am I doing? Self doubt, imposter syndrome, all the things so but the book’s coming out soon.

Where can our listeners find you and find your books and find your coaching?

Well, my one on one coaching is what I’m really most proud of, because that’s where I actually kind of sit one on one, like you are with the parent, to actually hear them out and hear what their fears are, and help them see their brain in action, and help them realize that you can only truly focus on what you can control, which is You, yourself and how you respond, not to react. Act to this child, right? So my one on one program is what I’m most proud of, but I also have a group coaching program called accepted and affirmed, which is for parents as well as LGBT plus people. Because today I brand myself as a gender and sexuality life coach. So I’m a life coach, but I focus on gender and sexuality, and that way I’m pansexual over here, my kid is trans over here. Why not, right? So I’m happy to meet anyone who wants to check me out on Instagram. It’s kind of my my playground. Um, at the mom attrition. So mom and pediatrician is the mom attrition. I had a Facebook page until literally yesterday, when he got hacked. So I don’t know. Well, that’s called mommy, if I ever get it back. And I have a Facebook group that is still there, because the it’s a private group. So they even, even when they hack my account, which is the second time my account has been hacked, they can’t get to the group. So my admins are still there. My assistant is still there. They’re running the group. He has 2200 parents of queer kids, just who want support. And as i Yesterday, I had lost access to that so they can find the group is called parents supporting parents and parenthesis, LGBTQ plus families. So parents supporting parents and parenthesis, LGBTQ plus families.

Well, thanks for joining us today. It was really interesting talking to you, and you’re doing really interesting and important work. Thank you for that.

Thank you. If you have any questions, you’re welcome to ask me now or later. I’ll answer what I can I’m also on LinkedIn. If you look up Dr. Lulu on LinkedIn, I’ll come up as the first one, I believe, so I’ve been told.

Great. Thank you, Dr. Lulu.

You’re very welcome.

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Important Links: 

Dr. Lulu

Dr. Lulu is a former Lt. Col and Commander in the U.S. Air Force, CEO of Dr. Lulu’s Coaching & Consulting Lounge and President of Dr. Lulu’s Angel’s Haven, a nonprofit organization helping create safe spaces for (homeless) LGBTQ youth.
A multiple award-winning Queer, Nigerian-born pediatrician, gender and sexuality coach, and LGBTQ+ educator.

Dr. Lulu is also the chief host of Moms 4 Trans Kids Podcast.

She is a mother of 3, her eldest is a transgender young adult woman.
In addition to her family-centered gender-affirming coaching & consulting practice; Dr. Lulu’s PRIDE Corner (which helps families navigate the psychosocial aspects of raising gender and sexually -diverse youth), she also helps support employee-parents at the workplace.
Her “Allies in White Coats” program trains culturally competent physician-allies to help mitigate health inequities plaguing the LGBTQ+ community.

She is the author of multiple bestselling books including How to Teach Your Children About Racism, and the upcoming “About Your Black Transgender Child,” and “Invited In: How to Become the Parent Your LGBTQ Child Needs” both set to be published late 2024/early 2025.

She’s also working on a physician notebook; Allies in White Coats: LGBTQ+ Basics for Healthcare Professionals, which drops much later in 2025!

She has been featured on numerous news outlets and interviewed by Oprah Winfrey for her work in LGBTQ+ advocacy.

She is a Youth Suicide Prevention Activist and former host of Suicide Pages, and The Pride Corner podcasts.

Dr. Lulu’s current focus is helping communities support and affirm Black transgender kids (who are often hiding in plain sight), one family at a time.

In her spare time, Dr. Lulu loves reading, walking around Midtown Atlanta, watching Netflix and Karaoke!

 

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