Living Outside the Box: Compartmentalizing Love & Acceptance with Jordan Reeves

Jordan Reeves is the Founder and Executive Director of VideoOut, an organization dedicated to producing LGBTQ+ stories, content, and programs to educate the world about the LGBTQ+ community and how to best advocate for it. Jordan has written for Huffington Post and created LGBTQ+ inclusive content for major brands including Hulu, Verizon, P&G, and AARP, and they’ve even given a TED talk.

Jordan’s belief that stories are a powerful tool that can connect the entire world is completely aligned with the mission of Gravity. We learn about their religious upbringing in Hueytown, Alabama, and the moment (or lack of) when they realized they were queer, trans, and non-binary. 

Jordan’s parents love them but acceptance isn’t something they’ve arrived at yet. We explore how Jordan has made their peace with this for the sake of maintaining their relationship, as well as the everyday struggles faced by the LGBTQ+ community, and the idea that we should look beyond the categorization of gender.

We also touch on the importance of gifting our stories to the world, the support hearing other experiences can provide for those of us in need, and the way that hearing about other people’s lives can normalize and cultivate acceptance across the planet. 

What Brett asks:

  • [01:30] Let’s dive right into your childhood.
  • [08:30] Can you elaborate on the idea of knowing who you were from a young age?
  • [17:00] How did you come to accept your parents’ views about who you are?
  • [24:55] Would you say that society conditions people to believe they’re something that they’re not or that they just hide their true selves?
  • [30:20] What happened to you once you became a teenager?
  • [38:40] How did you break away from your religious beliefs at the time?
  • [45:00] What happened after you left for New York, through to the present?

Lessons for intentional living:

  • The primary focus of Jordan’s story is the notion that we should never feel restrained by expectations to be something that we’re not. Let’s embrace our true selves and let other people accept us for who we are.
  • Sometimes, the right decision is to cut toxic relationships from our lives. As painful as it can be, we aren’t beholden to our parents and it’s sometimes justified to leave them behind as we grow. That said, Jordan offers a wonderful alternative to that through their point that love and acceptance are separate things. So long as our relationships are loving, then it may be possible to maintain them as a healthy part of our lives, even if they don’t necessarily accept who we are.
  • Jordan’s mission is the same as mine: to share stories and generate magic for everyone in the process. Stories are powerful things. We can only live so many experiences but a story is the next-best thing and there’s almost no limit to how many of those we can consume. Learning about the lives of others creates empathy, acceptance, and positivity. It’s nothing but a good thing.

 

Resources: