#199 - "This Fits”: What One Mother Knew All Along
Dr. Diana Sorrentino is a social psychologist and behavioral analyst, the author of Transgender Families, and the host of the Paradoxes of Gender podcast, which she says now reaches listeners in 210 countries. She’s also an affirmed woman who began her own transition in 1990.
In this conversation, Ryan steps into the student chair. Dr. Sorrentino explains how she understands gender identity forming before birth, why she sees so many parents stuck in their own fear, and what changes when a family finally has something solid to stand on. She shares the room of 40 strangers that ended decades of hiding, the distraught father who found her after a workshop, and the dinner where her Irish Catholic mother told her, “This fits.”
This is not a political conversation. It’s a human one.
In this episode:
- Why she says parents’ own fears often block acceptance more than fear for their child
- The question she asks skeptics: “How do you know you’re male?”
- What parents are actually grieving when their child still stands in front of them
- Why some families hold together and others fracture, and where chosen family comes in
- What happens to a spouse when a partner transitions
- The training gap she sees in medical and behavioral health care
Find Dr. Sorrentino at paradoxesofgender.com and on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-diana-sorrentino-ph-d-1b64781a4/
Subscribe to The Personal Success Podcast for more conversations about success on your own terms: thepersonalsuccesspodcast.com