Before we get to introduce our today’s guest, I would like to let all my loyal listeners and steadily growing subscribers know that we’ll be taking a creative break with this podcast. Recently, I was lucky enough to get invited to co-creating an artwork, and this will require my full attention. Since such a project has always been my dream, I’m thanking you for your understanding and loyalty. Please stay subscribed – we will be back as soon as possible! So, in the last episode before our creative break, we’re speaking with truly amazing and wise Scottie Jeanette Madden. I was absolutely moved throughout our entire conversation, by the clarity, profoundness and urgency with which she is talking about the circumstances of her life as a transgender woman. These circumstances are existential, as transgender humans, especially black transgender humans, are being oppressed and even killed in today’s America. “There is an active push to eliminate us in this country”, Scottie says. She is sharing with us her story, how much she suffered from having had no one to go to and no one to understand, and how hopeless she felt before she came out at about 20 years into her marriage with her wife Marcy. And how they, after Scotties transition, managed to build their love on new truthful grounds. When I was trying to understand the reasons behind why her community is so unwanted, she says: “I can’t understand why they are so blind. I stand in front of you: I am a woman. And I don’t understand why I don’t have the agency to declare that myself”. Rising more and more above, Scottie has some wise thoughts around those who fight transgender humans with so much energy even though this community is so small. And then she takes my favorite perspective: the deathbed-perspective. In the end, she says, they will be confronted with their own hatefulness. Maybe then they will see. “The real cost in all of this is the cost of our own souls”, she declares. Please welcome Scottie Jeanette Madden in this powerful conversation on Before It’s Too Late today! Scottie’s Ted Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/scottie_jeannette_madden_what_would_my_father_say https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottie-jeanette-madden-69b17b5a/ https://www.zuzubean.com/