Have you ever thought about where your self image comes from? In this fascinating conversation, SLSP host Tatiana Berindei interviews first-time filmmakers and long time entrepreneurs Katherine and Nick North about Nick’s transition from female to male and the impact it has had on their lives. Funny and moving, this powerhouse couple helps to shed light on common misconceptions about the transgender community and give us a glimpse into the inner world of someone who has gone through gender reassignment surgery. You don’t want to miss this impactful conversation – tune in to hear about how gender powerfully and unconsciously shapes the way we experience the world.

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Hello everyone. Welcome to the Sex, Love & SuperPowers podcast show. I’m your host, Tatiana Berindei and today, I am really thrilled to be joined by Katherine and Nick North. 

We are going to be discussing how gender influences self image. I have a feeling this is going to be a really, really juicy and epic conversation so I’m very excited for it.

Let me tell you a little bit about these two before we dive in.

During the first time filmmakers Katherine and Nick fell in love, it turned their world upside down and live to tell about it. Their first joint project is this personal documentary about how they fell in love, became a blended family with five kids and navigated Nick’s gender transition from female to male. It’s a short documentary. Just Another Beautiful Family premiered at the Calgary international film festival and won the Audience Choice Award in September 2019.

This is the first of many projects they hope to do together, in addition to co-parenting, driving the minivan, and doing the dishes as part of their beautiful families project, which share stories about all sorts of underrepresented and nontraditional families because every family is a beautiful family. I couldn’t agree more and I’m just going to give you just a little taste of them individually. 

Nick North is a husband, a dad to five kids, and a branding strategist. He also has a history of living as a woman, a wife, a mom who birthed four children, a photographer, and a corporate type. When Nick embraces identity and came out as transgender, he realized just how much gender affects the way we think, talk, sell, and function.

Hence, this is what we are going to be discussing today. Katherine North grew up as a missionary kid, yet, is now a foul mouth teasing mystic life coach. Love that. Queer feminist and mother of five married to a transman. She changed her name to Katherine North at the age of 42 just because she wanted to. And she might be the only life coach in the world who doesn’t believe in the law of attraction. 

So I want to welcome you both so much to the show. Thank you, thank you, thank you for being with us today.

Thank you so much for having us.

We’re so happy to be here.

Absolutely. So I’m going to start out asking you what your superpowers are and maybe starting with Nick.

Yeah, my superpower is just the fact that I’ve lived so many different types of life that I really can put my feet in anyone’s shoes. I’ve done the whole stay-at-home mom thing. I’ll be a work from home mom and a full time working mom and I also am now a dad and do the provider and working and stay-at-home and sort of different versions of that as well. I know what it’s like to both be mansplained to, and also to be in like the rigid box of masculinity. I have this ability to sort of see all different perspectives.

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I think that my ability to imagine something completely different than the current reality I’m living is something that has really helped me and will continue to help me.

Yeah. Which I’m sure very few people can say that they have.

Yeah.

And Katherine, what are your superpowers?

I would say one of my best superpowers is my imagination. And it saved me when I was a kid and I felt so confused by the world around me. In many ways, it’s been the impetus behind everything I’ve created, my coaching business, my writing, even the ability to imagine a totally different life falling in love with Nick, moving to Canada, going from being a solo single mom to a married mom of five. Then, you know, Nick transitioning. I think that my ability to imagine something completely different than the current reality I’m living is something that has really helped me and will continue to help me.

And now, I like when I interview couples to ask what the superpower is of the entity that’s created, when to come together as one in a couple.

I would say our superpower is our ability to be kind and blunt. This is one of the phrases that has guided us and it means that we are willing to have really, really squirmy conversations. Our rule of thumb is if you can be kind and blunt, and if you can’t be both, you have to be blunt. But that truthfulness is sort of the, the bedrock even when it’s uncomfortable.

I love that. I love that so much because I think that people shy away, I mean people naturally shy away from conflict. I think probably women tend to shy away from conflict generally more. And so to have that as a guiding rule of thumb, I think, is pretty awesome because it’s like, “I’m going to speak my truth regardless of how what feelings you might have about that.”

It’s easier to talk about it than to do it, obviously.

Yeah. It’s a scary thing. Especially when you don’t know if like, “Oh, is this going to be the end of our connection?”

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Yeah.

Yeah. I think the whole kind of blunt thing, it also, it comes back to that the gender norms and the way that we’re socialized. And as someone who is socialized female, and someone who is socialized Canadian, I avoid conflict at all costs in every way, shape or form. It was not a helpful thing for me. It was not useful really in my life. I think it helped me a lot as a kid because I had a little bit of a tumultuous upbringing and lots of people in and out of my house and fending for myself a little bit. So being able to avoid conflict and fit in was helpful then, but it hindered me later when I didn’t know how to have natural conflict within myself and I didn’t know how to be who I needed to be when it was uncomfortable. I didn’t have that buffer or that muscle of conflict built in. And so I was just who everyone needed me to be for way too long. And I think this is a bedrock in our relationship because we think that like for us to be together really happily on super in love 40 years from now, we have to make sure that we keep telling our truth even if it’s uncomfortable and even if that means conflict.

Yeah and being willing to see it through to the end. I love that so much. So you just said some really poignant things that I want to dive into more, but we do have to take a quick break before we go to break. Will you tell our listeners where they can go to find out more about the film or about your individual work?

Yeah, you can find out more about the film at our website, Beautiful Families Project. You can watch the whole film online there. It’s 20 minutes and it’s free. Go take a look. You can find us individually. I’m Declare Dominion on all social platforms. My website is declaredominion.com.

And I am Epic Danger on all of my social platforms.

Awesome. Go check out that film. It’s free. It’s very moving. It’s very impactful. Do it. 

All right, we’re going to take a quick break. We are talking with Katherine and Nick North about how gender influences self image. So it’s going to be a juicy conversation. So you’re going to want to stay tuned. We’ll be right back.

To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.

Music Credit: All instruments played by Amanda Turk. Engineered and produced by Tatiana Berindei and Daniel Plane reelcello.com

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