Transcription of Chris Kast for the show Father’s Day #144
Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast show #144, “Father’s Day,” airing for the first time on Sunday, June 15th, 2014. What does it mean to be a father? There as many answers to this question as there are men who have taken on this role. Today we speak with Chris Kast, brand strategist with Brand Co. and Christian Townsend of CT Marine about the influences their fathers have had upon their professional lives and upon their own fatherhood. Our interview with Chris touches upon some deeply personal issues. We were moved by his willingness to share his story. You won’t want to miss it. Thank you for joining us.
It is one of my great joys to be able to have conversations in this space, in the studio space, with dear friends of mine. I have no dearer friend than Chris Kast, who is the brand strategist at the Brand Company, which is a part of the Maine Media Collective where we tape our show. Chris and his husband Byron live in Portland and between them have four daughters. Chris and I have intersected so many times in so many different ways that I can’t even begin to say, but it is such a joy to have you here, so thank you.
Chris: Thank you.
Lisa: Chris, I think that if it weren’t for you we wouldn’t have the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour. In so many ways you’ve been a big part of what we’ve done. You have been here since before the beginning. You helped us set up our studio space. You’ve helped us really be so much of what we were.
Chris: It’s been a joy. I can’t take any credit for that except it’s part of a team and it’s part of what we do when something comes together. It just feels right. We just tend to do stuff here, and it’s great. Along the way we stumble and fall and go whoops, brush off and keep going. That’s one of the joys of being a part of this whole collective, this part of this journey, both personally and professionally.
Lisa: You are a big part of the Maine Media Collective. Maine Media Collective, for people who are listening who many not know, is Maine Magazine, Maine Home Design, Old Port Magazine, Art Collector Maine, all the guides, Eat Maine …
Chris: The Gallery at the Grand.
Lisa: The Gallery at the Grand. The upcoming gallery here in Portland.
Chris: Of course the Brand Company.
Lisa: Well, we already talked about that. I don’t want to slight them but part of what you do is so much bigger than just helping create ads. Your team does the ads for the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour, but really how I came to know you professionally was you helping me understand as a physician what kind of physician I was, and helping to understand as a radio show what kind of radio show we are. You really help people dig into who their authentic selves are. I think that part of why you’re so good at this is because you’ve had to work very hard to get to your own authentic self.
Chris: Yeah, I have. A lot of hard work.
Lisa: You’ve been on the show before so I know we’ve talked about you doing the … I think you were doing, it wasn’t a Tough Mudder, it was …
Chris: It was the Dynamic Dirt Challenge last year.
Lisa: The Dynamic Dirt Challenge about a year ago somewhere. Today as this airs you’re going to be going out doing the Trek Across Maine with another group of people, so you’re very active in that sort of way. You have a lot of friends in the community. Your life has changed pretty dramatically. The person that you were when you first came to Maine and the life that you had when you first came to Maine looks very different than the one that you have now.
Chris: It looks very different and it feels very different. It feels very different because it feels more real. I feel more connected to it. When I came to Maine I was married to a woman and I had a young baby. She was sixth months old; she’s 26 now. People do the math. I was living what appeared to be a great life. We had a house in Cape Elizabeth; I had a great wife; I had a kid; I had a growing career. But something wasn’t right. I always knew it, but something wasn’t right. The more I tried to make it right, the more it felt not right. That not right was being gay in a very heterosexual world, and the world that I lived in.
It took me a very long time and I was married 16 years when I came out. Outside of losing my parents and my ex’s parents, even more that was probably one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. I had to do it for my own self and to find out who I was. Not to find out who I was because I knew who I was, but to really be who I was. It was difficult on so many levels. It was hard because I first had to really admit what I’d always known to myself. Then I had to actually say the words out loud to someone whom I cared deeply for and loved. In the course of a 15-minute conversation on a night in August in 1999, I shattered a world and it was horrible. That’s the word for it.
Ellen, who is now one of my dear friends – her world flipped over. At that point I had two kids and they didn’t know it, but their world was about to flip over, and my world flipped over. I didn’t know where up was; I had no clue. In an odd sense that next day, it was a Sunday, we had gone through the paces. My daughter Blake had a friend over and we took her for a bike ride and went through the motions, went out and had a barbeque. I went out and just laid on the hammock after the dishes were done, just stared up into the sky feeling numb, having no clue what was to come next.
Ellen came out, she sat down on the hammock next me. She said “Can I sit here?” I said “Please.” The question was what next and neither one of us knew. But at that moment things started to settle. I’m not going to lie to say that the years, the journey to get where we are, where I am right now these years later wasn’t difficult – it was worth it. As far as when I think back, the only real sorrow that I carry with me is the hurt that I caused. It’s sorrow, and I choose that word carefully because there’s this thing about people thinking you have regrets. If I regretted it I wouldn’t be who I am today, so I don’t regret who I am today. I just have sorrow for the sadness that I have caused – but that sadness has healed. We’re able to laugh about it.
Something very powerful happened to me. Blake, who’s now going on to her second master’s degree … It was interesting. Two things: We lived in a small town. We lived in Cape Elizabeth and things have a tendency to swirl around small towns. Ellen and I had an agreement that when the gossip started to flow up to her, one of us would tell the kids. Ellen called me one November afternoon and she said “I’m sorry but I had to tell them because I started to hear things.” I wasn’t great with it but I was like “Well, okay.” I got them on the phone and I said “Do you know the show Will and Grace? Well, I’m like Will.” That made it okay for them because Ellen and I had separated, but it made them realize that it wasn’t because mom and dad didn’t like each other anymore. It was because it just didn’t work.
Fast forward a few years when Blake was applying for colleges. People kept asking me, friends and her college counselor, “Did you read Blake’s essay? Did you read Blake’s essay?” I said “no,” and I asked her and she said “You can’t read it. You can’t read it until I get excepted into a college, and then accept where I’m going to go to college.” I said “Okay, this is going to be good.” She got accepted to Grinnell, decided she was going to go to Grinnell, and she sent me her essay. It was a one page essay and I’m going to paraphrase it, but it was the story of when her mom told her and her sister that I was gay – that I am gay.
“It starts off it was a gray November day in Maine and my sister and I were at home after school having a snack. My mom said ‘Kids, there’s something I have to tell you about your father.'” In her essay she said “I immediately thought that she was going to tell me he had cancer. She said ‘Your dad is gay.'” Essentially she was waiting for the bad news. She said during that time, people in Cape kept asking her “Are you okay? Are you okay with this?” Her essay went on to say “I don’t know what they were talking about. My dad was still the loud obnoxious jerk at the sidelines screaming for me. He was wearing Converse high tops where everybody else was wearing their best Weejuns. He was there with a big smile on his face. He was always there and still is always there. Ten years ago, would I have wanted my family to be anything but what it was? No. But today would I want my family to be anything other than it is? Absolutely not.”
It’s hard for me not to tear up right now, and that really made it okay for me. It made me realize that the journey that I went on was worth it because she and her sister Emma are probably two of the strongest, most self-directed, most self-assured human beings in my world. I know this played a part in it. Was it the perfect childhood? Absolutely not. Did I miss a lot of time with them? Yeah, but it’s paying itself back right now on so many levels.
Lisa: I know that one of the things that you had to struggle with before you came out was your relationship with your father. You’ve been talking about, as a father, your relationship with your children, and you talked about the sorrow that you felt that somehow you had kind of rent a wound in their world. This was a sorrow that came pre-packaged. This was a sorrow that was already yours. You were an altar boy; you grew up in New York. It was always very difficult for you to talk to your dad.
Chris: Yeah. I can’t ever really remember having a heart-to-heart heartfelt conversation with him. I think that’s really sad. I have an older brother who’s an awesome human being, I have an older sister who’s an awesome human being, and I have a younger brother who’s an awesome being. Being the third of four and being the middle son, I know in my heart by the time I came along … I was different. I was not interested in sports. I was no interested in normal boy stuff. I tried to fake it and I think there’s a saying in the gay community that mom knows. I think somehow mom knew and I think somehow my dad knew I was different. I didn’t know what that meant but … There was no time for me. The things I remember is “Christopher, don’t you know when to stop?” He’d introduce me to his friends as a joke as a CPA: a constant pain the ass.
I loved my father. I can say that truthfully. I don’t think I liked him very much, and I don’t think I liked him very much because of the way I was treated. There’s specific incidences that happened that shocked me. It was because I think to a lot of degrees he didn’t take the time to understand me. Nor did I really, I don’t think, take the time to understand him. That is rough but I’ve come to terms with it and I know that in my heart he did the best that he could do. Just as I’m doing the best he could do, but what I’ve learned is to work harder at the connection – to read the clues.
Blake wrote me a letter on my 50th birthday that basically ended “Sometimes people use daddy’s little girl as a pejorative. I wear it as a badge.” She’s a teacher in New York City. She calls me every morning on the way to school and we talk. Her sister Emma is always snapchatting me, texting me, we chat. It’s the way we communicate; we stay in touch. It’s really pretty special. My husband Byron, I know he went through a similar journey and his two daughters, my step-daughters Emily and Olivia, they’re both connected. The four girls, they kind of are cut from the same bolt of cloth. You put them on a blender, you pour them out. They’re going to be the same person except for of course Olivia, who is quite the girly girl and the ballerina.
They call each other sisters. That’s a special connection, too. It’s one of the things, again, that sorrow that I feel is that I never really had that connection with my dad. To a certain degree it’s a gift that I’m able to be the dad I want to be. As a little kid dad, I’m a horrible human being. Babies scare the daylights out of me; I am not going to lie about that. I’m going to break it! Sorry, my bad. But as a father for growing and grown children, that’s the biggest gift ever and I take great joy and I take great pride in it.
Lisa: Here on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast we’ve long recognized the link between health and wealth. Here to speak more on the topic is Tom Shepard of Shepard Financial.
Tom: My sister-in-law just back from sailing across the Atlantic. Calm seas and smooth sailing is something I can confidently say we all want in our lives, especially our financial lives. That concept of smooth sailing is very close to what I refer to as the fifth stage of financial evolution. When we reach that stage you feel more secure and confident. You’ve successfully leveraged your resources to improve your life and feel more energized and have a good relationship with your money. Your investments generate income and you’ve got more time to spend freely. You’ve learned how to enjoy your money and life is flowing smoothly. Because evolution is a constant, you keep sailing forward and growing toward the next stage, and you feel good about it.
What stage are you in? To learn more about the stages go to www.shepardfinancialmaine.com.
Speaker 1: Security is offered through LPL Financial, member FINRA-SIPC. Investment advice offered through Flagship Harbor Advisors, a registered investment advisor. Flagship Harbor Advisors and Shepherd Financial are separate entities from LPL Financial.
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Lisa: I actually have no concerns about you as a future probable grandfather. I know it’s not going to happen any time soon …
Chris: Thank you for that.
Lisa: I’m pretty sure you’ll figure out the baby thing at some point in the not too distant future. Be that as it may, I also think that shame for you … There is the shame over being gay and being gay in a Catholic family. The alter boy trying to be the child that’s already considered to be a pain in the ass, I guess. But you had a deeper shame. This is one that was incredibly difficult for you to carry and one that I don’t think many people who know you know about.
Chris: No, very few people know. I’m not even certain I’ve told my brothers and sister. I know I haven’t told … well I will have by the time the show airs have told my kids. I was molested as a child. I was 13 years old and I was taken. It was a man and it was one of those situations where I know where you live so if you don’t meet me at this place this time of the evening I will tell your parents. He would drive by the house when I’d be outside raking with my father or something and beep and wave, slow down. My father would say “Who is that?” “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
The thing was I wanted to be able to say something but I couldn’t because I felt the shame. I felt scared. I felt all these things going by. Knowing when you’re that age that you … I didn’t know what gay was but knowing that I was different. All those things rolled up and I had to carry that with me. He would send postcards to the house. One day when I was supposed to meet him, out of fear, he never showed up. That caused a lot more “What? What’s going to happen now?” I lived with that for a lot of years. I lived with it thinking that it was my fault. I was a target; I brought it on myself; it was all me; it had nothing to do with this human being who was an absolute predator.
It took me until my 20s to actually admit to someone out loud that this happened. I told my ex-wife that it happened and I went to therapy. I had a quite a lot of years of therapy trying to understand what it was. What I know – not what I think – what I know is there are two types of people as I understand it that come through childhood sexual molestation. There are victims and there are survivors. The victims let it inform the way they live. I’m a survivor of it. I have a scar and it’s well, well-healed and well, well-covered. The biggest thing that I think about, the only thing that I really think about when I think back to those days, it’s not the shame, it’s not the fear: it’s the anger.
The anger that something was taken from me. The anger that I was able to survive it, but what about the other boys that this guy might have gone after who couldn’t handle it, and may or may not be alive today? That is something that I think about. That said, when I look back on it, and we had this great, great meeting not too long ago – our download day. Which for people out there, after we upload the magazines we get together as a group and do a download day where it’s basically a big conversation we had. One of the questions that Kevin put out there was “What do you expect? What do you want out of life?” Silence in the room, and me being me, I said what I said. I said “I just want to live an authentic life and be able to look the guy in the mirror that’s looking at me in the eyes and absolutely and genuinely say ‘You know? I like you. You’re a pretty good guy.'”
And I do: good, bad, or indifferent. I know what my faults are. I know what my foibles are. I know that I make mistakes everyday but I know that deep down I like me, and I like who I am, and I like the life I’ve got. I love my husband; I love your four kids; I love my ex-wife; I love my brothers and my sisters; I love my friends – and I have a great network of friends. I have a lot of friends but I have a handful of friends where I can just drop every guard. I count you one of those, Kevin, some of the people here. The people that are listening to this, who you know who you are if you’re listening. That’s a joy.
The most ultimate joy is being able to sit back as a father and watch these four girls go on their merry ways. One’s going on to her second master’s degree at Brown University. Another one is off to Chiwaukee and is hoping to get posted to the Peace Corps in Panama. Emily is in Nepal teaching English to monks. She’s helping track elephant migration. Olivia has got a goal board on the room in her bedroom about how she wants to dance with the American Ballet Theater in New York and how she wanted to make the corps de ballet for Portland Ballet. Check, check, check; she’s in the corps. Being able to just play a part in this – it’s what it’s about for me.
Lisa: Over the course of your life you’ve had to completely reexamine and redefine what it means to be a man. What you were offered when you were growing up is very different from what you’ve chosen to accept for yourself. Not many people do that. It’s a very interesting society in which we live, the way that gender roles are defined.
Chris: It’s interesting. I’ve had conversations over the years with Blake, who her minor was gender and women’s studies, which apparently is all the rage. At one point she said she didn’t believe in gender. I had to ponder what that meant, meaning that yeah I’m a man, but I’m just a human being. I’m living this life and there are certain things that I like to do that Byron doesn’t like to do, that he does better than I do. In fact, when we got married legally (yay Maine) we were interviewed by the Atlantic Monthly. There was a story that’s out there, it’s online, it’s about what heterosexual couples can learn about gender roles from same sex marriages.
The writer asked us “What’s it like in your home? Did you divide chores?” We didn’t really; we just gravitated to what we did more naturally. I’m slightly neurotic, a bit of fiend of the Felix Unger. I can’t really relax until everything’s in its place. I’m the one that likes to initiate cleaning the house and doing this. That’s just me. Byron grew up in Maine and can swing a hammer and loves to be outside and do the gardening, so just “I’ll mow the grass. I’ll do the gardening. I’ll fix that.” Okay. We both like to cook. We both do the wash but I’m the first one that’s going to be getting it in there and folding clothes. That’s just living life. That’s not a gender thing; that’s just living who we are.
We both like sports. He likes show tunes more than I do but I’ve been known to sing along. It’s paraphrasing a positioning line for one of our clients: Live your life, be who you are. I’ll drink good wine along the way and every now and then I’ll toss in a martini and be good with it because, as far as I know, we only get one go round under this sun. We have one opportunity to be happy, and that’s all I want and all I wish for all my friends, and that’s what I see and I want for all my kids.
Lisa: You figured it out. What you’ve needed to figure out you figured out as far as being a father and a human being.
Chris: Yeah, and I’m still figuring it out. It’s not a stagnation; it’s an evolution. Everyday I see something; everyday I learn something new about myself; everyday I discover something. I believe that to a lot of degrees that’s what keeps me so vital. I don’t mean it in an egotistical way: so vital, so young at heart. I have an incredible curiosity about a lot of things and I want to be able to feed that curiosity. There are things about me that I’m not so happy … I don’t read as much as I should anymore. I need to start reading more. I don’t need to; I would like to. I would like to start writing more, but it will get there because it will get there, and it will happen when it’s supposed to happen.
It’s funny, every now and then I’ll be having a bad day and that phrase “out of the mouths of babes often times comes gems.” My Emma is always right there when I’m saying, she goes “Dad, everything just works out the way it’s supposed to. You got to remember that.” She’s right, because it does. I remind her of that as well. We remind each other and it’s a got your back kind of thing.
Lisa: Chris, I know that the people that have worked with you as a brand strategist and people who are your friend, people who will be biking with you today on the Trek Across Maine, your children – I think that we can universally agree that you are really a gift to all of us. You’re a gift to me and I thank you for sharing your story and for being a part of my life, and for being a part of so many people’s lives. Happy Father’s Day.
Chris: Thank you. Thank you.