Episode 270: Parisa Akhbari

Coming Out Pod

Health & Fitness, Sexuality, Comedy, Mental Health

4.9 • 584 Ratings

🗓️ 11 October 2023

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today, October 11th, is National Coming Out Day, and the pod is celebrating with a *truly* delightful conversation with mental health therapist and writer, Parisa Akhbari! Parisa had an abstract fear of lesbianism throughout her early adolescence; enough so that she asked her mother at the age of eight if lesbians were "good people." But when her older sister came out a few years later, Parisa felt a huge sense of relief that "oh, it was HER the whole time - it wasn't me!" Parisa continued to repress her feelings for girls throughout high school (despite some same-sex smooching...), and not long after she'd started college, the idea of dating *anyone* went out the window when she was diagnosed with a debilitating disability. Parisa shares the beautiful story of how the Persian new year Nowruz ended up doubling as her own coming out celebration, and describes how her queer YA novel, "Just Another Epic Love Poem," is overflowing with love for her wife. Also: the legend of the Rusty Pelican, and why it gave a young Parisa butterflies!

Follow Parisa on Twitter and TikTok at @ParisaWrites, and on Instagram at @authorparisa (where you can also check out The Queer Muslim Project she mentioned at @thequeermuslimproject). And go to Parisa's website, parisawrites.com, to sign up for her newsletter and pre-order "Just Another Epic Love Poem," which comes out on March 12th, 2024!

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, everybody, welcome to Coming Out Pod.
0:09.9	This is a very special day.
0:12.1	If you are listening to this episode, The Day It Drops, Wednesday, October 11th,
0:17.4	it is National Coming Out Day, which I like to think of as the podcast's birthday,
0:22.6	despite the fact that we launched in June. It's, don't worry about it. So because it is
0:28.3	national coming out day, I would like to shout out what I believe to be a classic queer root.
0:34.7	Okay, shout out to you if your queer root is Ariel from the Little
0:40.9	Mermaid. Um, for those of us of a certain age, we saw this movie at a very formative time in our
0:46.7	lives. And she spends like 80% of it in a bikini. I don't know what they were thinking was
0:53.6	going to happen, but I credit
0:55.6	The Little Mermaid with, it probably contributed to me being gay. So shout out to you,
1:03.6	if that is also, you are queer rude. I am so excited about my guest today. She is a mental health therapist and a writer. Her debut novel
1:15.0	will be coming out in March of 2024. It is a queer YA novel called Just Another Epic Love
1:22.4	Poem, which we will be discussing. Please welcome Patisao Akbari. Hi, thanks so much for having me. Thank you for being
1:31.5	here for National Coming Out Day. Yeah, is there anything, before I ask how you identify,
1:39.4	is there anything you would like to share with the folks additionally about who you are mental health therapist and
1:46.1	writer those are two very busy you must be very busy one part of my brain and part of my life is
1:54.2	processing other people's thoughts and emotions and one part is processing my own and turning it
2:00.1	into words so just a lot of brain action.
2:04.2	Yeah, yeah. And can I ask as a therapist, do you tend to work with adults or do you work with
2:11.8	younger adults or I'm interested at the intersection of writing a YAA novel and being a adult therapist?
2:20.2	Yes. So when I first started therapy, I worked exclusively with adolescents, girls, and trans and non-binary folks. And that was
	...

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