7. Home

April 3, 2019·29 min·2 clips

Caitlin admits she's unbelievably nervous to tell her family she's non-binary, despite feeling more confident in her own skin.

It begins with a small confusion. The host is on holiday in Sydney, loses track of the day, and asks their dad while a Christmas call with Amru gets going. Home feels ordinary and loaded at the same time. Family chatter about time and holidays sits right beside the fact that the host is about to come out. The episode does not try to tidy that up. Later, the host thinks back over the series and the way those conversations have pushed at their assumptions. There are no neat answers waiting at the end, which feels right for an episode about living with questions instead of solving them on schedule. Their dad brings a calm, practical kind of care. He talks about modern technology, Skype, social media, and the emotional thread those tools can keep alive when people are far apart. Distance has not made the relationship disappear. The host asks whether seeing them intensely for a few weeks, then not at all for a long stretch, makes their changes feel sudden. His answer stays gentle. Instagram and the odd Facebook post give him small glimpses of a life he is trying to understand from far away. Then the conversation loosens. The host teases him about following one of their friends, and he jokes that they may have been playing with his phone. Under the joke, there is trust. Social media becomes a softer place to try identity out before it reaches family.

As heard by us

A Christmas family call becomes a quiet, open-ended look at coming out and living with uncertainty.

Caitlin's Christmas break call from Sydney turns into a quiet, direct conversation about coming out, uncertainty, and what it means to say a non-binary identity out loud.

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Why you'd press play

You want a coming-out conversation set on a Christmas call home, with the nerves and warmth intact.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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