Show Notes
In this episode of “Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice,” Patricia and Nicole reflect on their experiences at the Trans March and discuss their recent activities involving harvesting garlic and decluttering their book collection. They delve into effective communication techniques, particularly “I statements,” to improve personal interactions and resolve conflicts. The hosts also share book recommendations and discuss how community events and supportive gestures, like free hugs at marches, uplift their spirits.
Mentioned on the show:
- Bookshop Affiliate Storefront (links below are affiliate)
- Become a patron! Patreon.com/eedapod
- Subscribe to the ongoing Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice Newsletter
- Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary by Major Griffin-Gracy and Toshio Meronek
- The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life by Suleika Jaouad
- Her Majesty’s Royal Coven by Juno Dawson
- The Shadow Cabinet by Juno Dawson
- Human Rites by Juno Dawson
Find the full show notes and official transcript on our website: eedapod.com
Follow the show on Instagram & find us on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, & Spotify
Sound editing by Jen Zink
Transcript
Music: [Intro Music]
Patricia: Hey there, rainbow sprites. Welcome to Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice, the podcast for folks who would rather curl into the fetal position than Lean In. I’m your host, Patricia Elzie-Tuttle
Nicole: and Gay Pride Month is over, which means it’s time for Gay Wrath. I’m Nicole Elzie-Tuttle. We’re recording the show on June 30th, 2025.
Patricia: Yeah, we went out to the Trans March day of pride this year.
Nicole: It was great!
Patricia: We got to see friends.
Nicole: We got to hang out in a park for a while before we marched.
Patricia: Yeah, it was more like trudged. There was so many people.
Nicole: We kind of sauntered.
Patricia: Meand…
Almost meandered.
Nicole: Yeah, that’s good. We, we walked a good stretch of, uh, San Francisco with about 20 to 25 thousand of our closest friends.
Patricia: Yeah, it was great. It was beautiful weather, which it always is uh,
Nicole: yeah
Patricia: for Pride Weekend, so.
Nicole: Which, like, good, nice warm weather in San Francisco. It can be hard to come by even in the summer, but it’s always good for Pride weekend.
Patricia: Always good for Pride weekend.
We also harvested our garlic that we planted last fall.
Nicole: Yeah, we planted this in like, was that September? October?
Patricia: I think October.
Nicole: Like October. And it was as far as we could tell time to pull it out of the ground.
Patricia: Yeah, well, not out of the ground. We did it in containers.
Nicole: Containers full of ground.
Patricia: Containers full of ground. And we planted two different types.
One’s called Music and one is called German Red, and I believe one of them, they’re both, you know, culinary, but one of them is like Martha Stewart’s favorite or something like that.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: And the thing that happens with garlic is it has to be the right conditions for you to get a head of garlic with multiple cloves.
For example, if it doesn’t get cold enough during the winter, you get what I call a single gorlic. A single large, it’s just like one fat clove. We don’t know if our garlic has cloved. It has all the paper on the outside, the garlic paperwork, and we’re curing it right now.
Nicole: Which means it’s just hanging up like on our wall in the kitchen.
We have a little, a little wall of Tuscany in our kitchen.
It’s our, uh, display garlic.
Patricia: And if you hear pops in the background, it is firework season.
Nicole: Yeah, here in Oakland, we don’t just have like 4th of July fireworks. We have a whole season. It usually starts
Patricia: early June
Nicole: I was gonna say late May.
Patricia: Mm.
Nicole: It really starts winding up like the latter half of June and then extends kind of out into August.
Patricia: Which also FYI when we’re recording, it’s not even dark right now and they’re already popping off fireworks.
Nicole: Yeah.
And it does kind of culminate on July 4th.
Patricia: Yes.
Nicole: Which means nonstop fireworks from an at least an hour before sunset till about three in the morning.
Patricia: Yeah. Three or 4:00 AM Yeah.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Yeah, so. Pride. Trans March. Garlic. Fireworks.
And also I had a friend come over to help start decluttering my books. Like she was helping me. I had probably, gosh, there are probably a couple hundred to a few hundred books on the floor that are just either books we purchased, but more often books from publishers and some of them I read the audio book, so I don’t need the physical book anymore.
I really needed to make the shelves, like the bookshelves we have, more findable for like what is actually on my radar to read next or coming up. And now we just have different piles on the floor.
Nicole: Yes. More neatly organized piles, some of which also have labels in front of them.
Patricia: Yeah. And a good, gosh, that’s about 120 books are outgoing in different ways. They’re going to friends or, or, um, use bookstore or whatever. So there’s a plan for these piles, is what I’m saying.
Nicole: Yes.
I, I look for, I, I think it’s important to note that these are not all books that we purchased.
Patricia: Correct.
Nicole: A lot of these are books because of your other podcast work
Patricia: mm-hmm
Nicole: that just show up to our house unannounced.
Patricia: Absolutely.
Nicole: We’ll just open the door and there will be book
Patricia: yeah
Nicole: outside at least one, sometimes a whole box. Did we ask for them? Not always.
Patricia: But hey, I love books showing up and I love sharing them. So that was my friend came over, she was over for like eight hours or so, I don’t know, maybe. Yeah, about eight hours.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: And she also helped me take pictures of clothes to put on Poshmark, which if you are on our Patreon, you would know I’ve been dragging my feet on, so she helped a lot with that.
Nicole: Yeah, you all set up like a little cool photo studio situation for taking pictures.
Patricia: Yeah, we had a little picture taking factory going.
Nicole: Yeah, it was really amazing. I stayed out of the way.
Patricia: You did
and I appreciate you for that. But, again, I know people, you know, we say like, oh, it helps to have a friend come over and, and help you out. But then, but then it actually happens and it’s, yeah, it’s really helpful. It has to be the right friend though.
Nicole: Has to be the right friend. Also, I think it’s important this friend did not just say like, hey kids, can I come over and help you with something?
Patricia: Yeah. She didn’t just be like, let me know if I could do anything. Like she was very direct. I am going to be in town on this day. I can help you declutter from this time to this time. Are you available?
And I was like, yes, because that made me, you know, when people are like, hey, let me know if I can support. Let me know if I can do anything. I appreciate the sentiment, but that makes me feel like I then have to project manage that person and figure out something for them to do, and when I’m already drowning, it helps to, for people to make direct clear offers.
Nicole: Yeah, and in this case it meant we just had to make sure we were home.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: And like we were like, okay, we gotta be home. And then it’s like the stuff was already out basically.
Patricia: Yeah, I decided like, what two projects are we working on? And then
Nicole: yeah
Patricia: we ran with it.
Nicole: This is your regularly scheduled reminder that this is an independently run podcast. Downloading, sharing, and giving us reviews and ratings are free ways to show us support and we really like support.
Patricia: Yeah, and if you don’t know what to write in a review, you can also, you know, give us many, many stars and write what you would love for us to talk about or tell us your favorite way to eat potatoes or you know, whatever.
We love reading them.
Nicole: Oh my God. I would love to see just a whole suite of ratings that are like, I love Patricia Nicole. They’re amazing. Also, French fries are great. And the next one’s like, I can’t believe Patricia and Nicole have been so awesome at this. I love a baked potato. This would be fantastic.
Please do this.
Patricia: I’m actually waiting for one that is just like, five stars! Potato salad! Just like, just the type of potatoes. Amazing. I love it.
Nicole: Please do this.
Patricia: Please do this.
Nicole: This would just make everything, this would just make us giggle uncontrollably.
Patricia: Yeah. And obviously we will share it with y’all.
And also it is free. It is a free way to support us. And if you have a few bucks to donate, our Patreon membership start at $3 a month. Even if you don’t wanna be super engaged with the content there, it’s a way to make recurring donations to the show. No pressure. There are three tiers to choose from, but the top tier does have a limited quantity.
Nicole: You can also, I’ll say this, you can also tell us about your favorite potatoes there.
Patricia: Yes. Just everywhere. Potatoes everywhere.
Nicole: If we get enough people doing this, maybe we’ll start a new segment. The potato corner.
Patricia: The potato corner.
I don’t know about that.
Nicole: No. Welcome to the potato Corner. Thank you to
Patricia: our supportive potatoes?
Nicole: Our supportive potatoes. This week we’re talking about our latest person. They love hash browns.
Patricia: I mean, I do love hash browns.
Also though, another way to support us is through our bookshop affiliate links, so any books we talk about, we link in the show notes. And we also link on our Bookshop Affiliate shop page, which you can find through our website eedapod.com. Of course everything is linked in the show notes. I try to make everything as findable as possible.
Music: [Transition music]
Patricia: So before we get into the meat of today’s episode
Nicole: would it be the potatoes of today’s episode?
Patricia: The meat and potates.
Nicole: Just the potatoes.
Patricia: Just the potato, no meat. Vegetarians today.
Nicole: Potatarian.
Patricia: Potatarian, I mean, yes.
I wanna give a bit of background. I think I’ve mentioned this on the show before, but I used to be a sex educator and I used to train sex educators. And I used to do this with an organization called San Francisco Sex Information, or SFSI for short.
SFSI started in 1972. It was a switchboard where people could call and get unbiased, non-judgmental, confidential, evidence-based information about human sexuality. Get their questions answered.
Eventually the switchboard, we also started having an email address and people would email us from all over the world. Um, even places that don’t have this kind of information. Our email was kind of an underground thing. We would get, like I said, email from places that you wouldn’t expect to be having our email or access to our website.
And we also would put on a training that was like over 60 hours. It was more human sexuality training than doctors got in med school or people got in their psychology programs or therapist programs.
And so people would take it for therapists, continuing education credits. Doctors would take our class, but also we’d get sex workers take our class and just people who wanted to be sex educators and people who wanted to volunteer with the nonprofit. The thing about SFSI, which I think is on hiatus now. It like shut down before the pandemic, I wasn’t involved for years ’cause I moved to LA and, so, maybe it’s on hiatus. Unclear.
But the really unique thing is that so much of our training was around communication skills.
Nicole: Surprise. A lot of the questions that people have around sex, intimacy, and relationships actually comes down to communication.
Patricia: Yeah. They show, they showed up for sex ed, they got communication skills. And it was one of the reasons why our training was only in person because there were so many exercises that we did, and every time someone left the training, you know, it was always the most valuable thing they got was the communication skills.
Most people aren’t taught how to communicate effectively or with a certain amount of emotional intelligence in K through 12 or or whatever.
There’s a book that came out in the past couple of years titled Supercommunicators, I think, by Charles Duhigg. He also wrote The Power of Habit and this book coming up was a wake up to me because this is just how I have communicated for decades, but I realized this is new information for a lot of people.
Nicole: Yeah, most people don’t get any kind of formal education and communication skills. I just happened to get a course in it when I was taking some extra classes at a community college at one point. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have really gotten any. Most people learn from the people who raised them and from other adults in their life, like teachers or coaches.
Some people learn from older siblings or cousins, but none of this guarantees that what they learn growing up is actually good communication skills.
Patricia: You learn communication skills. Can’t guarantee they’re good ones.
Nicole: That being said, there’s nothing preventing you from learning better communication skills in adulthood. Like now.
Patricia: Let’s help everyone.
Let’s start with I statements and that’s the I as in me, not eye as an eyeball. Many people are often advising use I statements when you communicate. No one is actually teaching folks what I statements are.
Nicole: Is this just like, I like cheese.
Patricia: I was going to start quoting Doechii, and that is not appropriate for this podcast.
Nicole: No, I don’t think Doechii is, uh, I I think that might get us an explicit tag, my love.
Patricia: Yeah.
Okay. I like cheese.
Nicole: I like cheese.
Patricia: But no, that’s not an I statement.
Nicole: That’s not an I statement. Okay. Maybe we should look a little further into this then.
Patricia: Let’s, let’s help people, let’s define what I statements are.
Nicole: Sure.
I statements are a communication technique, so it’s like the name of a specific style of communicating. It’s not just a label for statements that start with I.
Patricia: Any ol’ sentence. Any old I sentence. Yeah.
Nicole: And a lot of times this is used in conflict resolution, but it doesn’t have to be like in a formal conflict resolution. This can just be in trying to communicate between two people, particularly if someone’s doing something that makes the other person feel less good or feel great. Like when
Patricia: You can have positive eye statements too.
Nicole: Yeah.
When you bring me a hot drink in the evening while I’m curled up on the couch. That makes me feel great.
So when we’re talking about I statements, this is a, a communication technique that typically involves two parts. One part is a statement of something that happened or happens, and it starts with a phrase like “when you” dot dot dot. The other half is a statement of how it makes you the speaker feel. So this usually starts with the phrase, “I feel,” and you can do this in any order.
Patricia: Yeah. I think we learned while writing this script that we learned them in opposite orders.
Nicole: Yeah. I learned it to start with the, “when you” and follow up with the, “I feel”.
Patricia: And I learned, well, I’ll give a couple examples. I put the “I feel” first. For example, I feel upset when you interrupt me, which could also in your way be when you interrupt me, I feel upset.
Nicole: Yes.
Patricia: Or I felt hurt when you didn’t reach out on my birthday.
Nicole: Which could be flipped around too. When you didn’t reach out on my birthday, I felt hurt.
Now, sometimes people try to manipulate the format of an I statement to be an accusation, and I think this is really important. For both of these it really needs to be nonjudgmental. And you’ll, you’ll get a better idea of what we’re trying to say with this in this next part.
One way you can kind of spot this, turning it into an accusation is in the part where you’re supposed to say, “I feel,” like I feel upset. If the word “you” slips in there, that is kind of a sign of this being twisted around. So an example of the correct way would be like, “I feel unheard,” but if you are kind of twisting this up, it might come out like, “I feel like you’re not listening.”
So you see how the, “you” slips in there like a, “you are not listening.”
Patricia: Mm-hmm.
Nicole: In the feelings part. We’re supposed to be talking about me
Patricia: mm-hmm
Nicole: and suddenly it turned around.
Another way you can test this is by replacing the word “feel” with the word “think” and see if the sentence still makes sense. Like if we started with the the wrong way, which is like, “I feel like you’re not listening” and swapped out that “feel” for “think,” “I think that you’re not listening” versus “I feel unheard” where we swap that out, it becomes, “I think unheard,” which clearly doesn’t make sense.
The first one. “I think that you’re not listening,” that works. And with that you can tell this is not an I statement in the sense that we’re talking about this style of communicating. It’s, it’s, it’s just pointing fingers.
Patricia: Yeah. I call this the California I statement, the tendency to use the word “feel” when a more appropriate and direct word might be “think.” It’s the difference between, “I think you’re immature” versus that California I, “I feel like you’re immature.” Both are name calling, but the second one is trying to deny ownership.
Nicole: Yeah. That’s how we can pretend to talk about our feelings without actually talking about our feelings, and instead just be a little rude or a little shady.
Patricia: Yeah. Or it’s just being mean.
Nicole: It is really.
Patricia: It’s really, it’s, using it in this way is manipulative.
Nicole: It really is.
Now you can make I statements extra effective, if you wanna be extra with them, by following that up with an expression of a boundary or a need. Like, I feel blank when blank. Follow that up with, I would like blank.
An example would sound something like, “I feel upset when you interrupt me. I would like you to wait until I finish speaking before you start.”
Patricia: That is so blessedly clear.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Well, and I think that some people might take that clarity for aggressiveness or, you know, people aren’t used to that kind of directness.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: And at the same time, I know for me, and, and sometimes you, it really helps when someone is clear and you’re not trying to read the subtext or you know, it, it’s more accessible this way, I think is what I’m saying.
Nicole: You have a phrase actually that you like to use around this.
Patricia: That there’s no such thing as mind reading.
Nicole: I mean, yes. But another one I’ve heard you say is, “clarity is kindness.”
Patricia: Yeah.
That one…
Nicole: and this is really clear.
Patricia: Yeah. And that is not my phrase.
Nicole: That’s not?
Patricia: That’s Brené Brown’s phrase.
Nicole: Oh no.
Patricia: It is, it is the one good thing I have taken from her and I hold onto because I do think clarity is kindness. And as she says, clear is kind and unclear, is unkind.
Basically, you not being clear, is not setting up pe people up for success.
Nicole: Yeah. And I think in this case like this, this style of communicating what you’re doing is expressing like how the someone else’s actions are impacting you in particular.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: And that’s really important when you are trying to make change in some way.
Music: [Transition Music]
Patricia: So for takeaways, Nicole, what do you have?
Nicole: I would say like, if you’re unsure about this or you’re, you’re going into something where you think this might be useful, practice these ahead of time and then watch out for those “you” statements sneaking into where you should be talking about your own feelings.
What about you, Patricia?
Patricia: I have written down the same, uh, takeaway, which is I statements take practice.
Nicole: Huh.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: It’s
Patricia: You don’t just wake up and make I statements.
Nicole: And be like, when you make dinner for us, it makes me feel loved. Or I guess I feel loved.
Patricia: I feel loved. I was going to say, I wasn’t even in that statement.
Nicole: I still need to practice everybody.
Patricia: Nicole, we have a little bit of extra time here.
Nicole: Oh, do we?
Patricia: We do. I want to know, what are you reading right now? Or have you read anything good lately?
Nicole: I’m actually wrapping up a book you mentioned on our episode from June 11th, which is Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary by Miss Major Griffin-Gracy and Toshio Meronek.
This one is interesting ’cause it’s, yes, it’s kind of biographical, but it’s done in an interview style. Which I really appreciate because the reader, you as the reader, really get to hear Miss Major tell a lot of her story in her own words, which is really fun.
Patricia: Yeah, there, there are some great moments in that book. That book came out just over two years ago, and it’s a good one. Highly recommend.
Nicole: Yeah. I’ve been reading it as kind of my bedtime book and oftentimes I let out a little laugh and you have to stop whatever you’re reading so that I can read you that little part.
Patricia: Yeah, you can’t leave me out.
Nicole: What about you? What’s, what’s going on in your book world?
Patricia: I actually wanna share a book that I talked about, I think in the April All The Books episode, and I just wanna mention it here for this audience. It is titled The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life by Suleika Jaouad.
It is a book about journaling. It’s also a lot about cancer, FYI. But it’s not a book that tells you how to make a journaling habit, or that you even have to, or it’s not a book of just journaling prompts. She actually gets a lot of stories and anecdotes from a diverse crowd of people, musicians, writers, chefs. And they share anecdotes, essays, little stories, and then they have a related kind of writing prompt.
So they tell their little story. And then the prompt might be, you know, tell me about a time when food wasn’t just food. Or tell me some, a teacher did that changed your life, or something like that. And even if you don’t plan on writing any of the prompts. It’s still a great read.
I also recently did a reread of Her Majesty’s Royal Coven, and the second book, The Shadow Cabinet, because the third book comes out in the US on July 1st. We’re recording this on June 30th, so tomorrow. Although the audio book is a bit delayed. And then the third book comes out in the UK on, what’d we say, July 17th, I think.
Nicole: Yeah, that sounds about right.
Patricia: Yeah. So if you are a person who was a Harry Potter fan and you are an adult and you want books that are good and adult, Her Majesty’s Royal Coven, a plus.
Nicole: Yeah, I just started my reread of the first one in the series. I got my second one, the audiobook for the second one on, I think I already pulled it in from the library, and I can’t wait to read the third book in the series, to wrap that up. And also for my copy to arrive from the UK with the special sprayed edges and autograph so that I can complete the series in special sprayed edges and autographed versions.
Patricia: Yes, of course. But also, as you mentioned, the books on audiobook are delightful.
Nicole: Yeah, they’re really good.
Patricia: Well read. Yeah.
Nicole: Okay. Patricia, what’s been filling your cup lately?
Patricia: Honestly, seeing how happy you were at Trans March. You know I’ve mentioned before when we were in LA, LA was so spread out, and we had friends, but it was hard to really find community and. Like being up at TranSMART, really, Trans March, really… TranSMART where you buy your trans Trans March, um, was it just reminded me why I’m so happy we moved back up to the Bay Area. So seeing you happy’s filling my cup right now, still.
Nicole, what’s filling your cup?
Nicole: I’m gonna say going to Trans March.
That was, that’s, that’s really filled me up. I think, like I said earlier, the estimates were like 20 to 25,000 people were there. Seeing the march span, literally blocks of a major street in San Francisco at in particular, a time like this in this country is, it’s indescribable the joy that brings. Yeah.
Patricia: One of our friends said something that I loved, which was every Trans March they always see new genders they’ve never seen before or never imagined. And it reminds me of that meme that is like, yeah, every time you complain, we’re gonna make a new gender.
Nicole: Yeah, it’s just, I don’t know.
Patricia: People are endlessly creative and expansive.
Nicole: And I just, I love our community in that way.
Like we’re so amazing and, like, I hate the way people talk about is, oh, we’re so strong and resilient, but like, you can’t stop us. Like, you can’t take this away from us. We’ll always be here. So like, we always have been. We always will be. There’s, there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s just another really cool thing that people do sometimes.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: But, seeing the support of that many people all coming together and I mean, you were there, not everybody that was there was a trans person.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: It was also really cute to see all the parents there.
Patricia: Absolutely.
Nicole: With like their signs and everything. And you could tell sometimes they came… looking around, I saw there were clearly a couple people who like, they looked like total normies. They looked like they came from out of town and brought their like late teenage kid.
Patricia: Yep.
Nicole: There just like, and you could tell they kind of were unsure, but they’re like, this is important to my kid
Patricia: yeah
Nicole: so we’re here.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: And like, we’re, we’re gonna support them. We love them. We don’t always understand it. But we can tell this is really important to them.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: So we’re here.
Patricia: Yeah. It was, it was great. People giving free, free mom hugs. Free dad hugs.
Nicole: Oh god. Yeah. There’s, they show up at a lot of different events doing that.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: But it always, it always makes me feel like someone’s like chopping onions right under my face.
Patricia: That too. That too.
Well, that’s our show for today. We’d like to thank our awesome audio editor, Jen Zink. You can find her at loopdilou.com. We’ll leave a link to that in our show notes.
Nicole: You can find the full show notes and transcript at eedapod.com. That’s E E D A P O D dot com. There you can also find a link to our Patreon, our bookshop link, and a link to the ongoing, Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice newsletter.
You can also find us on Instagram and Bluesky at eedapod and email us at eedapod@gmail.com.
Patricia: We are nothing if not consistent.
Nicole: We would also appreciate it so much if you would subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or YouTube or I don’t know, wherever else we’re published that you’re listening to us that allows for ratings.
Doing so really does help other people find us and if we are one of your favorite shows, you should let people know. Tell people,
Patricia: please. I think we’re also on, what is it? Pod Catcher. Pod Chaser. I don’t know. One of those. And you could leave reviews there too. We would also appreciate anyone who can subscribe to us on Patreon. Support is going to help us keep this show going, especially without ads. You can find us patreon.com/eedapod.
In the meantime. We hope you find ways to be kind to yourself. Drink some water and read a book. We’ll be talking to you soon.
TransMART.
Nicole: TransMART. I’m over here like when I see parents giving away free mom and dad hugs. It makes me feel really happy, but also like I’m gonna cry. Did I do it right that time?
Patricia: Maybe.
Potatoes hmmm.. make fries and then poutine! Au Gratin, scalloped, yummy and you both have great voices and content. Kristal E referred me to your podcast.