Episode Twenty-Six: The Interview-Adrian Coffey

In this longer episode, Adrian discusses what it means to be transitioning into his best self as well as how a simple act can powerfully change one's life. Find out how Desert Storm played a role in his personal miracle.

Transcript

So I lost my grandfather that same year.

He died in a freak motorcycling accident.

And my mom had to come home on emergency leave to bury him.

And it was an incredibly tough time because my mom had to go back.

So she came home on emergency leave.

I got to see her.

And then she had to go back to Afghanistan.

There are very few moments in my life where I recall completely breaking down.

And one was when I heard my grandfather died.

My knees buckled.

I like collapsed to the floor.

And when my mom left after his funeral.

I always really like to actually present with my name.

And that sounds silly because everybody presents with their name.

But for me as a trans man,

My name Adrian is my birth name.

And I'm very proud of my name and to not say that anybody else's journey or what they experienced should define that or everybody's experience in transitioning is different.

And for many people,

A name change is absolutely necessary to feel part of themselves.

But for me,

My name has been Adrian.

And I am a trans man born of Carrie Rubin.

She,

Yeah,

She is an incredible mother.

And I feel really gracious to have her.

It's ironic that my last name's coffee because I am also a coffee professional and have been for about 10 years,

Which always kind of makes people giggle.

So I identify and present in the world as Adrian Coffee,

A trans man who just happens to be in the coffee.

I kind of just dove into coffee and really enjoyed finding out where it came from.

I would go and sit at the slow bar.

And then I was like,

I think I want to get back into this.

But I want to get back into it in this one.

So I started there,

Only worked there for a few weeks as I was left with an ultimatum from my old job selling phone.

So basically,

I could take over six stores and make a lot more money.

I was working for Boost Mobile.

I was running a series of Boost Mobile stores.

So I actually got robbed the first working at Boost Mobile.

I've been pistol whipped.

I had people curse at me every day.

It was not a good environment to be in at all.

But I feel like it's made me the potential of losing all of that money or all of these things and then also dealing with violence in the workplace has made me very grateful and appreciative for simple things like no one's going to fight me over a cup of coffee.

And if they do,

It's a cup of coffee.

And you can usually end the argument by like,

Dude,

It's just a cup of coffee.

I'll make it right.

It's all good.

I never really identified as a girl.

It never really was a thing that I actively pursued when I was younger,

Like at the age of seven-ish.

I got my first skateboard.

I started getting into comic books.

And my mom just kind of labeled me as a tomboy at that point in time.

I found myself being attracted to girls at a very young age,

Really wanting to be around them,

Wanting to interact with them way more,

But felt so much more comfortable in my skin,

Like hanging out with my cousins and stuff,

Which were all boys.

As I kind of grew up as a teenager,

Went through puberty and everything,

I definitely embraced around like 13 or 14 the side of femininity.

My chest was starting to develop.

I was starting to,

Quote unquote,

Become a woman.

Those were literally some of the worst years of my life.

I hated puberty as a girl.

It never really sat well with me.

It always made me feel kind of like,

I don't ever want to say like the source or God or whatever made a mistake in the maintenance room,

But more so that like,

I just always felt kind of squeamish and like not really in my body and never really felt like cherishing of my body.

I always knew that I was a quote unquote tomboy,

Always knew that I wanted to dress like a boy.

I wanted to like hang out with the boys,

But didn't know there was a name for it.

Didn't know that there was a potential for me to ever step into that space.

And so a lot of people have asked me more recently because I came out at 27,

This was last year,

Came out at 27.

And they're like,

Why are you coming out so late?

Like,

Why did you always feel this way?

And the answer is like,

I didn't know that being trans was an option for me.

I didn't know that there was a name for it,

Gender dysphoria.

The feeling of like really not sitting well with my gender.

But for me,

I think I've known about it since I was about seven years old,

But it really,

Really hit me hard as a teenager.

Puberty sucks.

Now I'm going through puberty round two.

So this is great.

Luckily my prefrontal cortex has fully developed so I can handle it a little bit better.

I'm going to be back in a little bit.

Evan Flo.

My mom was a single mom for a good 12,

13 years.

My family,

My immediate,

Like my uncles,

My aunt,

My grandmother and stuff,

Everybody is pretty religious,

But it seems to Evan Flo on how they identify with their religion.

There's been Catholicism,

Then everyone became porting in Christian movement,

Especially when my mom got deployed.

My mom got deployed to Afghanistan several times.

It was when she went to Afghanistan that she really,

She got baptized and she wanted to be a part of these different churches.

And so when we moved from Florida to Amarillo,

I noticed the biggest shift in my mom as far as like religion and it was never like,

My mom was always really cool about like,

You will believe what you want to believe,

But for now you're going to church with me.

And I really liked church as a teenager and stuff.

I really,

And to be honest,

You know,

Like West Texas mega churches,

They were just a place to have fun.

They were not a place to like,

You're not getting closer to the spirit.

Like you got some dude like decked out in tattoos,

Be like,

I used to be addicted to crack,

But now I'm with the Lord.

And they would play like music and big bands would come out and hands would go up and then you would go and play pool with your friends for two hours.

Everybody was there for a social experience.

It was not so much.

I don't really recall people being like,

Wow,

I feel closer to God in this experience.

My mom really liked going and meeting people at church.

I think it was a really good and safe space for her to be in.

For me and my brother,

It was a part of structure.

It was a part of like every Sunday,

You get cleaned up,

You go to do this and you say hello to the people in your community.

And God was the center around that,

Yeah.

But like,

It really never felt like God was the reason we were there.

We were there for community that just so happened to circle around God and Christ.

I mentioned before,

My mom was deployed to Afghanistan.

It was my senior year.

So she missed my entire senior year.

She missed prom.

She missed my homecoming.

I came out as bisexual while she was gone and then later came out as gay.

This is in 2009.

So people,

I mean,

This is still where things are pretty heavy in that area of the world.

I mean,

There was just the potential that she could not come back.

The Navy really did my mom in and sent her overseas just two years before her retirement was supposed to kick in.

And she left behind three children.

And my stepfather,

You know,

He tried,

But he was not equipped to be raising children that were not his.

So I lost my grandfather that same year.

He died in a freak motorcycling accident.

And my mom had to come home on emergency leave to bury him.

And it was an incredibly tough time because my mom had to go back.

So she came home on emergency leave.

I got to see her and then she had to go back to Afghanistan.

There are very few moments in my life where I recall completely breaking down.

And one was when I heard my grandfather died,

My knees buckled,

I like collapsed to the floor.

And when my mom left after his funeral.

Now thinking on it,

It's probably one of like,

If you were to capture it on film,

Probably one of the saddest experiences of my life.

So my graduation was coming up and I was like,

Oh,

My mom,

You know,

She came home on emergency leave.

So I was like,

There's no way in hell my mom's gonna make my graduation.

So graduation comes up and get home and it's like maybe like two or three days before graduation.

And I go into my parents' bedroom and my mom is sitting on the edge of the bed in uniform,

Like home to see me graduate.

I can't remember a time in my life where I felt that much relief and that much joy at the simplicity in that moment of like just getting to see my mother.

Whatever string she pulled,

Whatever she was able to do to get home to me,

To witness this big moment in my life and to be there for that was in itself,

I felt like magical.

My stepdad really struggled with that and he and I did not get along at all.

I mean,

Constant altercations.

And then my father isn't around and my baby sister,

I think she was maybe only like a toddler at the time.

She was like three or four.

He worked at the VA hospital.

So it was like,

Most of the time,

It was just me and my sister.

And I learned how to raise a kid.

It was like,

I was like,

I'm gonna go to the VA.

I'm gonna go to the VA.

And then I went to the VA.

And then I went to the VA.

And I learned how to raise a kid.

It was super strange.

I think the strangest thing was how the community kind of came around that.

And the community really supported her and such,

But it was weird to have strangers by my prom dress.

It was weird to have people wanna interview me,

How it was a child living without a mother in this area and like all this stuff.

And that was really the strangest part of it all.

And we just could not watch the news.

I think the news was the most stark enemy at the time.

Anytime I would turn on the news and it would have a story about Afghanistan,

I would just like break down.

Growing up in a very strict household that my curfew was nine o'clock,

I wasn't allowed to stay out with my friends.

My parents didn't even give me the opportunity.

And really when my mom left,

My stepdad just was like,

If I was not hitting that top tier of perfection as a straight A student,

Top 10% of my class,

All of this,

I didn't amount to anything.

But then when I graduated and I got accepted into Baylor and I was like,

I wanna go to Baylor.

And then I still didn't have the support after I had accomplished all these goals that I thought I was supposed to hit to be a good child or to like make them proud.

I spent the night out with a woman.

Basically they were like,

You can't have that here.

So I moved out.

I was 17 when I moved out.

My birthday's in August.

So yeah,

I graduated in May at 16,

Started college and school,

Got into drugs,

Sex,

Rock and roll,

All of that fun stuff that,

And ended up dropping out of school.

Yeah,

Probably wasn't my shining moment,

But I got to live it.

And now I get to share those experiences,

Hopefully with younger people and people who are still trying to like figure themselves out.

I ended up just moving in with a buddy of mine who was older.

He graduated like two years before me and I lived on a couch for about six months.

Yeah,

It was nitty gritty,

Gross.

We smoked like pack of cigarettes a day,

Played video games.

I was already drinking at that point,

But I worked two to three jobs.

I had been working since I was 14,

Lived in a lot of crappy,

Crappy places until I was like 21 or 22.

And then I was able to get good jobs.

I was able to,

At 22 years old,

I moved into like a town home for the first time.

That was mine with my ex and supported basically my partner and her child on my salary at 22.

What I think is kind of beautiful,

But also tragic about your story is,

You know,

You're so young,

You're 16.

In this time,

Your mom gets sent off to Afghanistan and it's completely unexpected.

She's probably just distraught at the thought of leaving her family and her kids.

And then you have to move out of the house.

And I would have felt,

You know,

For me,

I would have felt so abandoned at that point.

But you,

Even if you felt that,

You pulled yourself up by your bootstraps,

You took care of what needed to be taken care of.

You lived in grungy places,

Sure,

But you made it through and you didn't let your circumstances define who you were at that time.

But also now we've,

You know,

Come back full circle.

You've told your mom,

You know,

Who you are and she's like,

Okay,

That makes sense.

And so,

You know,

Going from this place where you felt probably pretty abandoned,

Where you had gotten to the world on your own and now you're here in this place where your mom's like,

Okay,

And there's acceptance.

Does it feel like you've kind of come full circle?

I would say I feel like I've come full circle in the journey,

But almost more like the infinity sign,

Like the figure eight.

So it's like,

I'm at that point right now where the two mesh and align perfectly in tandem.

So yeah,

It's been the experience of looping back around and now getting to explore this with my family and getting to like see how we connect.

Like my mom,

You know,

She still occasionally struggles with pronouns,

But I will say she's better at it than some people we know.

She,

You know,

Calls me her son.

My brother calls me his sibling or brother.

My sister calls me her sibling.

Like everyone has adapted very well.

My stepdad's pretty much the only one that's been a little bit on the fence and stuff.

And I just think that there's a lot deeper issues and deeper seed of things that need to happen with that relationship to make that one come full circle.

I went through two years of suffering without this person in my life who I felt like should have been there during these really pivotal moments of God,

16 and 17,

Like without your mom as a woman was just like incredibly difficult.

I think there's something really beautiful about the human condition and the human need to like to suffer,

To be able to experience bliss and to be able to experience joy in the very simple things.

So just her presence being that simple thing,

Being literally the most,

What I could have thought of as the most magical moment in my life that we take for granted so often.

And I think it's just really important to let that set in.

Don't take the people in your life for granted because you never know what the circumstances may be that take them away from you,

Even if it's not permanent and to really enjoy those connections and stuff that you have.

This has been episode 26 of Bite-Sized Blessings,

A podcast all about the magic and spirit that surrounds us.

If only we open our eyes to it and whether you choose to listen to our Bite-Sized offerings or to our podcast,

We'll be back with more.

So thanks for joining us.

We'll be back with more.

We'll be back with more.

We'll be back with more.

We'll be back with more.

If you're interested in reading more,

Or you choose to listen to our Bite-Sized offerings for that five to 10 minutes of freedom in your day,

Or the longer interviews,

We're grateful you're here.

I'd like to thank Adrian Coffee for sharing his story today,

As well as the creators of the music used.

Raphael Crux,

Lilo Sound,

Chilled Music,

Music L Files,

And Music Hauled.

For complete attribution,

Please see the Bite-Sized Blessings website at bite-sizedblessings.

Com.

On the website,

You'll find links to other episodes,

As well as to change makers,

Playlists,

Books,

And music I think will lift and inspire you.

Thank you for listening,

And here's my one request.

Be like Adrian.

Figure out your authentic self,

And then bravely live that self in the world.

Thanks for watching,

And have a great day.