Dillan Digiovanni on Activism and Identity

have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf Y, thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is

Dylan di Giovanni, an interactive health coach. Dylan has a Master of Education and Integrative Wellness, Leadership and Change in Individuals and Cultures from Leslie University, Cambridge, mass and a Bachelor of Science and Education secondary major in Art at the College of New Jersey. You in New Jersey. He's a member of the Speaker Bureau of International Information Programs

and International Association for Health Coaches. Our sponsor on this episode is health i Q. To see if you qualify and get your free health quote, go to health i q dot com. Slash wolf or mentioned the promo code wolf when you talk to a Health i Q agent. And here's the interview with Dylan di Giovanni. Hi, Dylan, Welcome to the show. Thanks very much for having me. I'm excited to have you on at I mentioned to

you when we were talking before. I rarely accept unsolicited guest requests for people that I don't really know, um, but there was something about the way you wrote and the topics you brought up that I thought, I want to talk to this guy. So I'm I'm excited to have this conversation. But let's start like we always do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking to his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of

us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in

the work that you do. Well. I first learned about that parable, I would say, back in two thousand five, and I remember someone shared it with me and I thought, well, that's really interesting. And then over the years I just always kept reminding myself of that, and in fact, most recently this past June, I got the tattoo of the two wolves, you know, one on each arm. But the way that I gradually began to apply it more and

more was as my own wolves started to surface. I started to really actively choose more and more the good wolf as much as I could, and really focused on that as a as a choice that I could make, and every interaction, every thought, whether it was an interaction live with a person or just thinking, you know, even in my mindfulness, excellent. So your main idea when you

emailed me was about activism and anger. You know, you described yourself as an angry activist and and talked about how that's changed for you a little bit, and I'm really interested in that subject. What I'm interested in is that there's lots of things in the world that it's easy to not like right now. And you know, I'm sure for a lot of my listeners there there there

are challenges. But I think at any point in time, right you could look at the world and find lots of awful things, people that seem awful all that, and yet the question I'm interested in is how do we be effective in the world. How do we make a difference. How do we do all that without either a being miserable ourselves or be making everybody around us miserable because

we're so upset about it all the time. And so that's kind of what I want to cover, you know, with you, So if you can maybe just give us a little background. Sure. So I identified as an activist for a long time, and definitely as an angry activist because that was the ideology that I was taught. I would say, in my early twenties, I kind of started hanging out with this with this group of folks who are very politically engaged and their narrative was around anger

being the way to be effective. So I got absorbed into that just kind of like a club, you know, and really believed and and really invested in that. I didn't even see it as an ideology. I just saw it as truth. And we we were all about mostly, you know, we were focused on social justice, so racial identity politics, sexuality identity politics, you know, social justice issues.

And then when I became a health coach in Two Hells and Nine, that ideology started to crack because I started to see that that anger was actually working against me because it was driving people away. And that had already happened with my family because I was being so militant in my opinions, there was no room for anyone who had a different opinion and I and I really alienated myself from my family or my family for me right.

And and so the health coaching, the whole foundation of my training as an integrative health coach is there's no right way to do anything. There's no right way to eat, there's no right way to exercise, there's no right way.

And then so then I naturally had to incorporate that into this strong activist identity that I had and it's us started to break apart little by little where I really started to see that this way of being angry in the world was actually doing more harm than good and it wasn't actually achieving the ends that that I had been told would happen if we just kept being angry about what what wasn't working. And then the more I started practicing Buddhism, started to just see that as

more truth. And that's how it evolved over time. Yeah, it's interesting to hear different people talk about anger, certainly addressed in different Buddhist texts in different ways, and there's a sense that anger can be used as an energy, right, that the energy of anger can move us towards positive things, but the emotional residue or the bitterness that it can

jeels into, can be so problematic. And that's one of the things that troubles me the most today when I look at like social justice issues, which I care about deeply, but boy, it's like nobody is exempt from the outrage, right, Like you could be on so body's team a dent, but if you don't say it exactly right or you don't understand exactly where they come from, there just seems to be all this outrage and and I feel like it keeps a lot of different communities of people not

uniting as well as they could to move issues forward, because there is this sense like this is the way it's got to be done. And I have a right to my experience and you don't. And you know anger, And again, I think anger is an important energy, but I agree with you, I can see it can be counterproductive. So besides your family and what other ways in your life, was it counterproductive for you? I mean myself first and foremost, because what I was doing was, you know, turning that anger.

What I what I can see now is that that all that anger inside was I was also turning it against myself. I was turning it against myself first and then from there turning it against other people and more and more. I just saw that that as a way of being, in a way of thinking, in in being in the world, was bringing about no happiness and no satisfaction, because when you're angry all the time, all you're doing is constantly looking for the threat. You're not looking for

the opportunity. What else was instrumental in transforming that identity um or that alignment you had with that ideology. So I became a coach in two thousand nine, and there was still a conflict. There was still an internal conflict because I had been in that community for so long. I was do I want to use the word brainwashed, maybe, you know, but it was it was It was a real you know, my brain was really wired that way, and but it was starting, you know, starting to to fray.

And then in two thousand twelve, I began the process of transitioning my gender identity in my mid thirties, and what happened is that was actually the thing that kind of cracked the rest of the process because the response

that people had to my transition ranged. It was everywhere from people rejecting me out rightly, like my family the relationship I was in similar kind of thing um, But then there were other people who were embracing me, but kind of treating me like an other, like like this alien species, when people had never treated me like that

for thirty or four years of my life. And that plunged me into some real deep anger because for the first time I could no longer intellectualize prejudice and discrimination. I was experiencing it outright. So you got plunged into this deep anger during that period. And I'm sure that there were a ton of things going on in that period, and I'd like to explore that a little bit because it's just not something we've talked about on the show at all. But let's stay with the anger theme for

right now. Sure, And I started to see that the anger, because I agree with you, anger is I think a healthy thing to have. It tells us something that something's wrong right. It's a symptom that says something's not right here. But what I learned from my therapist, who was an amazing person and just recently passed in June, was that it's telling us that there's a feeling that we need

to address or pay attention to. So with his help, I started to get underneath, like what is the feeling that's underneath the anger, And the feeling was um fear, fear of being abandoned more or you know, stigmatized for the rest of my life. Fear of not being able to control how people spoke to me or how they saw me or how they treated me, resentment, all the

bad wolf feelings. That's when I was like, wow, I really understand this parable now, Um, at it, or I said I should say, at a deeper level disappointment, regret all of those feelings. You know, should I have done this? Maybe I never should have made this decision um of just the full range. And one night, when I could really sit with those feelings, I really started to understand that being angry at people for how they were treating me or speaking to me, or we're curious, you know,

the endless questions. Being angry about that was not serving them. It wasn't going to help them. It was definitely not going to help me, and it was never going to change the world for the better. I think that's a big part of you know, people talk about forgiveness or getting over anger, and I think for me that was the fundamental thing that I think turned me into a person who's pretty easy to forgive, pretty slow to anger. Was when I've really, at a at a fundamental level,

understood what it was doing to me. You can chalk that up to being selfish, which it is to some extent, but I just really realized, like, oh boy, like this is awful. I am really suffering and the other person is not. This doesn't make any sense, and it just made me less effective in every way totally. Here here I was, you know, making people feel ashamed and embarrassed for being ignorant, and ignorant at face value is just

lack of awareness. Right here are these people not trying to be delicious, not trying to hurt me, but just doing things from a place of curiosity and ignorance, And I was making them feel horrible about it, right, Yeah, I mean I think there is there. You know, obviously we could talk about different types of ignorance, but one type of ignorance is just very much like you said,

it's just I just don't know. And and you know, you and I had a conversation before the show a little bit where I was like, all right, I want to make sure I'm going to get my terms right because I don't want to offend anybody in any way. I want to treat people the way that they want to be treated. And yet it's sort of like, well, I'm not quite sure, and so you know, I think in a lot of cases it it comes, like you said, it comes from a place of of concern or care.

But if you're so angry all the time, you can't tell them apart almost totally, I agree and and the way to use all those words or terms, right, that's essentially another whole language, is what I realized. Whereas when I was in the activist community, I think a lot of you I'm speaking, I'm totally generalizing, but I think a lot of activists forget that they've nurtured a culture that's exclusive and it has its own rules and language, and and a lot of their anger is how could

I speak for myself? A lot of my anger was forgetting that I was making assumptions about what people knew and didn't know. And when you step back and you say, well, actually, it's a whole different language, which is like a different culture, and you know, I wouldn't expect a person from a different country to come over and just automatically be able to know, Um, it really changed. It was a whole different frame. Yeah, it's one of the most fundamental lessons

I think. But when we stop assuming we understand people's motivation were so much better off. You know, like you can look at the action and go, Okay, well they said this or they did that, and you can like that or not like that, right, and you can address that. But the minute we go into they did it, because boy, I get my you know, I used to get myself into trouble. I still do get myself into trouble with

that all of the time. And it's also very much sort of a self absorbed mindset because it means like I just assume everybody thinks like I do. So if I did this here what it would mean me. But it's totally different for someone else, or can be completely And now back to the interview with Dylan di Giovanni. Let's stay with the anger theme for a little bit longer. So talk to me about your relationship to anger now. Mm, well, I'm awake to it in a way that I wasn't.

I think the anger was just in the driver's seat, and it just compelled me for definitely, you know, years before my transition, but then definitely in the transition early on. And then I just started to realize, like, this is a self created prison, Dylan, and you signed up for this for the rest of however many decades you have on this plan, and you either walk through the world really annoyed or frustrated or whatever, or you get to choose how you're going to respond, you know. And if

I'm being completely honest, with you, because why not. I mean, it's really a day to day practice, just like I think it is for everybody. But it really is a day to day practice for me. And I will say it definitely gets easier with time when you come when I come from that place that I don't have to be perfect. I'm allowed to get frustrated with people sometimes. As soon as I allow that, then you know, as as it works right as I allow it for myself,

then I can create that space for other people. Yeah, that is a mysterious way things work, is that you know, when you allow something or don't resist something. It's very easy for me to recognize that in an exterior sort of way, like well, I shouldn't resist that I have to go to work, or I shouldn't resist that it's cold outside, or I shouldn't resist something else. It's a lot harder for me to recognize it with a personality trait what in a twelve step program we might call

a character defect. Right, it's a whole lot harder for me to be like, all right, I'm just gonna let that be there. I'm gonna let myself be that way, and it works, it works, But boy, it's non intuitive and hard for me to do because there's a fear like, well, if I just let it be there, it's always gonna be there. Like I can't act like that, I can't be like that. You're talking about a work in progress.

That's what I'm still definitely working my way through. Is I'm like, well, some of these things that I've tried to get rid of for how many years aren't going anywhere. You know, they may not be as as grievous as they once were, but they're still there. And so maybe the approach needs to be like, all right, you know, just sort of like I see you in the same

way that you know. I talked with people a lot in the Coach and I'm sure you do, and we talked about on the show around relating to thoughts and feelings in that way, get some distance and just see them. You don't have to change them, you don't have to make them go away. There's different approaches, but learning to do that with my own personal sort of flaws, I guess it is more challenging. Yep. So let's talk about

the transition. So I would just be curious, like, for how long did you know that you that you did not identify with your your given gender. Was that something you've known a long time or did you grow into that awareness or Thanks for asking the question, because I'm really always excited to share my experience because it's pretty different from the common narrative that's out there of what people think and what other what other folks associate. UM.

I grew up not really having that internal conflict. I was more identified as like a tomboy, right. It was kind of more of an androgynous tomboy, which was an acceptable identity. And because there was no visibility of transgender people when I was growing up in the media. Yeah, and then when I moved to Boston in two thousand six from New Jersey where I'm from, UM I started hanging out with transgender people, I started becoming exposed to

them as as a as an as an existence. And but it took, I would say, another well, from like two thousand three to two thousand twelve for me to actually start to explore that for myself, like is this true for me? And here's the honest truth. I came to the conclusion after exploring that that I couldn't really answer the question because I lived as a person for thirty four years, and I couldn't imagine into a completely different reality. So I ultimately just made the decision to

try it. And so that's a fairly significant trying it is this isn't then again, You're right. The narrative that that I've heard or understand is that people lived in this unbearable confinement for all this time and then eventually

summoned all their courage two to make a change. And it sounds like it's very different in your case, totally totally, because I I always lived self expressed and completely comfortable, you know, except for a few occasions where I had to wear like the required clothing of of you know, you know, for graduation ceremonies or whatever. I mostly wore whatever I wanted to wear, and had been doing that for many years. So the gender expression of ambiguity or

androgyny wasn't you know. I'd already been doing it for so many years. So then it was the next step of like changing other things. And then it was at that point that just became like a conscious decision, honestly, And I think when I tell people, like, they're like, that's wild, you know, and I was like, yeah, it is. But there must have been enough of a thought that that could be the case that you maybe were unable to say like absolutely yes or absolutely no. But there

was a pull in that direction. Obviously. It wasn't like one day you were like, I'm going to wake up and you know, throw my whole life into chaos to a certain extent, just on a whim. Right, Yeah, definitely wasn't a whim. It's not like I woke up and was like, hey, this would be fun. It was after, you know, after careful discernment, where I did ultimately make the decision that it wouldn't necessarily be fun, but it would be an adventure that I was ready to take on.

I felt like I had lived a certain way and had lived as a certain identity for thirty or four years, and at some point my body would give out and I had enough of an inkling that I thought, well, this would be a really wild adventure. And that's exactly what it's become. I am a person inside and out that I never would have been if I if I hadn't done it. And it's pretty awesome. That's wonderful. It's so great to hear like that. You know, on the

other side of it. It feels good. So you refer to it as a transition as in past tense, and again here comes my lack of real knowledge of it. So is it is that something? And it is like a point you hit where you're like, all right, done, Like I transitioned and I am done. Now the transition is over and now I am established in this gender.

Every person makes that decision at different points. So for me right now, I'm satisfied with with any adjustments to myself you know, physically, mentally, emotionally, but also mindful that I'm of working progress until I leave the planet. So it's always going to be, you know, and maybe in five years I'll make a different decision or something like that. But every person um makes that decision of at different points.

But for me, I'm content. So that process of transition can go on for either much longer or shorter time, and that it's totally each person's sort of decision. But from your perspective, you feel like at least that part of the journey is kind of you know, at a at a stand still point, You've got lots of other

growth and opportunities you're working on. Yeah, definitely one of the things I've seen you talk about in your blog and in different places is the idea of resilience, and I'd be interested in as you went through this transition,

which was enormously challenging. You mentioned your family abandoned you, people that you thought would really understand sort of treated you strangely, and where did you turn to for the strength to continue that process through and get to the other side myself ultimately, Which is why I really wanted to share this story with you, because that parable of who we ultimately decide to become for ourselves is really the most fundamental decision that we can make, because in

a moment like that where you're really in despair, you know, if I have moments in of despair or regret or feeling so abandoned, feeling so alone, feeling like, um, I really don't belong anywhere or with anyone, like these real deep feelings of isolation, in the blink of an I or in you know, in a second, I can make a different decision and feed that other wolf and say that I'm fine the way I am. I'm finding my own company, like I can become my own best friend.

Because of that parable. You know that that's like we could go down one tunnel, or we can decide to go around back and go down the different tunnel. And I can say that they were people along the way who would support me and encourage me. But what I found is with the transition, there were increasingly fewer people who understood. You know, so first I distanced myself from the activist community, and then I transition, so that's like this whole other layer of a different lens of living life,

and then I'm really intense Buddhist. There were fewer and fewer people who would understand all the different things I was understanding and seeing, and so I finally was like, you know, I I have to be that source for myself. Yeah, what you just said, uh interested me. It triggered something in me, which was you are mentioning like people who understood all those different aspects. You know, I'm no longer an activist, and I am transitioning, and I'm a Buddhist.

And and it's interesting because I used to think of mentors and in twelve step programs there's the idea of a sponsor, and the sponsor is you know, they always say, well, you know, ask the person that you want to be, you know, like that you look at them and you're like, well, that's where I want to be, and I could never do it. I would always look at them and be like, well, like I like that and that, but they don't have this, or they don't have that, or they're not going to

understand this part of me. And it took me a long time to realize, like, I'm not going to find that person. I'm not going to find the person who's me five years from now, because that's what I want. I want the me in five years to lead me along. And I finally hit a point where I was like, it's not gonna happen. There is no other me in

five years. I can go to certain people for this type of helper advice and other people for this type of helper advice, but thinking that I'm going to roll them all into one uber person who's going to be like my my true guide and savior was misguided. And I think it cut me off for a long time from getting help from people in particular areas because I was like, well, they don't understand all of me. I

completely identify with that. I think I look at them the major thought leaders today and there's nobody who's living my experience that I would want to emulate or you know that that I even feel like understands the world the way I understand it. They have certain identities and they've lived certain experiences, but there's no one who has this extra piece that you know, and even like I said,

I referenced my therapist, he had a lot. But then there were moments where I would say, you know, you know what I mean, and he'd look at me and he'd say, quite honestly, I don't know what you mean. I haven't lived what you've lived, and I don't you have to tell me. And that's when that's when I had the breakthrough, like I've got to be this for myself, and I think that at the same time, we'd have

to be that for ourselves. And there's places to turn for help, right, there's people we can turn to even if we're like, well, they know they don't understand everything about me. Still, you know, obviously you do you do coaching work, so that's you know, part of what you offer to people. Sure, sure, yeah, people can make contributions right and from the place that they live, and it's as valuable. It brings value m If you're enjoying this conversation, I hate to be the bearer of bad news. We

are nearing the end of it. I wish you could keep listening once the episode ends. Well, I've got some good news to you can The interview continues over at one you feed dot net slash support. There, if you pledge at the ten dollar level, you'll get access to this additional exclusive content, as well as many other bonus conversations that have been recorded with our guests. We really need and appreciate your support, so we hope you'll head over to one you feed dot net slash support and

pledge to access this additional weekly content. And now back to the interview. You've talked about anger being a work in progress. Obviously, I think it is for all of us. What are the sort of things that make you angry today? What triggers you, what sets you off the Dylan of today? Well, my own expectations about how other people should behave. Ultimately, that's what I really saw, and and you and I were speaking earlier, and that's what I see now happening

on the world stage. Is so much of the anger that people have is they keep expecting other people to be thinking and behaving the way that they either think and behave, or that they think people should think and behave, And they don't get that as a distinction. They don't get that that they're doing that, and and how they're really even in the name of something that they think is so just and so positive, they're actually adding more

aggression to the planet with these unrealistic expectations. And I say they're unrealistic because they're not dealing with how people really are, right, Whereas if you meet people where they really are, then you can work with them right. So and and yeah, and you and you said that earlier, and I really saw that for myself that so much of what makes me angry is when I completely forget that people are being who they're being instead of who

I think they should be being. Right. And that's a tricky one, right, because this show is so much about finding the middle ground, right, and it's so much about balancing contradictions and paradoxes and all that. And and this leads us right up into another big one, which is I've got this view of the way I think the world should be. I've got a vision of what's right

and what's wrong. So I've got that on one hand, and then on the other hand, I've got this sense of letting things be as they are and accepting people where they are and being in the moment and and and acceptance. And it's this sort of constant push and pull between acceptance and change. And that's why I love the Serenity prayer that was you know, mostly reference and

Twilstep programs. I would say it is perhaps it's in the top five wisest things ever written, I think, because that's the heart of our human condition to a large extent, is what can I change? And what can I And the things that I can give me the strength and the energy and the courage to go about changing them in a useful way, and the things I can't, you know, let me accept those and the wisdom to know the

difference is obviously the tricky part. And that and that's really what I saw, and that that was my last kind of handhold to that angry activist identity. Was, um, if I let go of this anger, I'll be so passive that I will do no good in the world. I will be read as being too passive, looking like I'm just you know, who cares whatever life is a dream, you know, and I'll lose this need to help be

a change agent. And then I realized, no, it's actually in letting go of the anger and the need to change people that you actually will help change things, because when they don't feel threatened and they feel invited into transformation, that's actually how I can help make a difference. And I was like, Wow, why didn't I get this ten years ago? You know? And that, and it was it

was great. Although I think I agree with and I think there probably is equally a place for really angry activists, and it's probably good we have some of them, um, because I think I think, you know, a lot of a lot of social change probably moves forward in that way. But again, I guess the question would be, could you use that energy and that drive and all that without being so angry? And I don't know the answer to

that question. For some people, maybe the answer is no. I agree, you're right, but it's one of those that like, for me, that's not a person anality style that works for me long term, um, either in again for my own good or for the good of the people around me. So you mentioned Buddhism multiple times. You said, you're pretty into it. Is there a particular lineage or tradition that you follow, a particular teacher that you have kind of

what's what's that look like for you? Yeah, Pemma Children is the person that I really have been following since two thousand, two thousand one probably and then definitely her teacher, and I got to kind of, you know, ultimate experience, I have to say, Like, I went up to a couple of retreats up in Vermont and got to meet her a couple of times, and I actually asked her this question at the microphone in a program about you know,

how can I be a more effective activist? And she said to me, you know, ask your peers if their anger is actually working. So that was a major lightbulb moment for me. And then I got to take a selfie with her, which was awesome. Yeah. Yeah, she's she's great. She is. Um So, Leonard Cohen was the number one dream asked for me on this show that I never got on the show never happened. Um I got at least got his manager to communicate with me. But um shows.

Anne Jack Hobner, who we had on a couple of shows ago, was a Monk with with Leonard Cohen and I once I just said to him, I said, well, you know what, what do you think the odds of it, like getting Leonard Cohen on this show? I mean, do you think you could ask him or you know, like I don't like to, you know. And he was like, well, I don't know, but you should know that his monk name means great silence. So don't get your hopes up there,

you know that said Pema. Chodren is right in the top five also of people that I think would be great guests. I haven't. I tried it like when we started and never got any response because we were virtually unknown. We're probably still too small for her, but it what never hurts to ask. Yeah, I never know, never know. I'm here today because I reached out to you, so you never know. Yep. She's wonderful, very remarkable teacher, very relatable. Yes.

And so then do you have a p do you standard sitting practice or meditation practice that you do or what's you know? Okay, I'm so undisciplined, but but I you know, it's more just evolved into like in the moment, just like you know, trying to constantly be conscious and mindful. Yep, but I do need to sit more. I started getting into meditation when I was twenty. That was a long time ago, manage. A matter of fact, it was eighteen.

It's really only been in the last three years or so that I've gotten to the point where I meditate pretty much every day. Um. It took me a long time to figure that one out. Um, But I finally think I kind of cracked the code on it and got to the point where I'm like, all right, I do this every day. Some days I do it longer than other days. Sometimes I'm better about like, Okay, my practice is close to an hour a day. There's other times it's over an hour. There's sometimes it's like five minutes.

So it's it's inconsistent in that regard. But I've taken the whether I do it or not inconsistency out of the picture. So you inspired me, I'll start tomorrow. Well, So what I did was I just I would read books, you know, I'd read Pama Choder and I read Jack Cornfield or all this, and I'd be like, yes, I got to meditate. I see why it's so important. And they'd be like, sit down for fifteen minutes or twenty minutes or thirty minutes, and I hated it, like I

just couldn't. It just was really difficult. And so I started this round with like, all right, i'm gonna do two minutes, but I'm gonna do two minutes every day no matter what. And then I was able to build up to three minutes and then five minutes, and I could slowly layer on. So it was really this small step approach and then just giving up any expectation of

what meditation would be like. While I did it, I would get so frustrated because everybody else would be like, I love to meditate, It's so nice, and I was like, that is not how I feel. Right, I'm meditating and I feel crazy. Um. And so when I finally just went like, well, okay, that's maybe that's just the way meditation is for me. I'm still gonna do it, it got a lot easier. Excellent. Well, Dylan, thank you so much for taking the time to come on. Thanks so

much for reaching out to me, and let's keep in touch. Definitely, thanks again for having me. Okay, bye bye bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to The One You Feed podcast head over to one you Feed dot net slash support. The One You Feed Podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show.