0:01

I would like to bring out onto the stage

0:03

America's favorite x non

0:06

skateboard riding house about dwelling,

0:08

nurturing, sweets, adorable, thoughtful,

0:11

thought provoking, anti racist comic,

0:14

Miss Kelly Dunham

0:21

from a Cocoa Punch and I Heeart Radio. This

0:23

is the Turning America Lands. There

0:26

are still four episodes left this season, but

0:28

today we have a bonus for you. It's

0:30

a little different. So

0:33

like most of you, I used to be a nun. Uh,

0:39

very relatable. That's very relatable in stand up

0:41

comedy to get up and starts to talk about how you used to be a

0:43

nun and people you

0:45

know like and sometimes in straight clubs people will be like,

0:47

oh yeah, whatever, sister Mary bull dyke Uh

0:51

but um, I used to being on with the outfit

0:54

and everything. Uh. You

0:56

know Kelly Dunham from previous episodes, she's

0:58

a former sister who's missed. Has told her she walked

1:01

like her shoulders were angry. But there's

1:03

so much more to Kelly's story. All

1:05

these twists and turns. Of

1:07

my happiest childhood

1:09

memories were learning

1:11

words. I remember asking my mom, what

1:14

what does that bill? I mean? She goes, well, what

1:16

do you feel like you both love something

1:18

and Nanny don't love it so much? All

1:21

I want? And I was like, oh my god, that's

1:23

exactly how I feel about you. What

1:33

my mom had plants in here. Yes. One

1:38

of our producers, Emily Foreman, talked

1:40

with Kelly about her life before the Missionaries

1:43

of Charity and after about her faith

1:45

about her comedy. So, um,

1:48

I just want to go back, back, back, back, back back.

1:51

Uh, what's

1:53

the first joke you ever told? But

1:56

mostly about her complicated relationship

1:59

with her mom. So I'm the youngest of seven.

2:01

Um, my mom had

2:03

had six other kids with as

2:06

many alcoholic husbands, which I think is really

2:08

impressive to find that one or two

2:10

but another alcoholics. Um,

2:13

sometimes you just have our types, which,

2:16

uh, you know when you think about

2:18

like, okay, so what the thought process

2:20

like? You know, my last five merriages

2:22

alcoholics ended in financial ruin. But

2:25

I've got the right alcoholic. So

2:28

I appreciate my mom's level

2:30

of hope. So that's a rural

2:32

Wisconsin accent. And you hear in Kelly's voice

2:35

she grew up there hard work and

2:37

not talking about feelings with the family code.

2:39

So is Dale Carnegie, the author of

2:41

how to win friends and influence people. It

2:44

was an incredibly popular book, and Kelly's

2:46

dad made the books philosophy part of life at

2:48

home. Well, first, my dad

2:50

would frequently um

2:53

mornings. He would come down. We had to be sitting at the table

2:55

at sixam, and he would slap his

2:57

hand on the table and say, act him through the second

3:00

you'll be enthusiastic, and most people are just

3:02

about as happy as they make up their mind they're going to be,

3:05

which she would attribute to Dale Carnegie and

3:07

sometimes to Abraham Lincoln, although

3:09

I've since heard that it was Dale Carnegie

3:11

quoting Abraham Lincoln, but doesn't sound like Abraham Lincoln

3:14

because Abraham Lincoln a clinical depression. I bet

3:16

he did not say that most people are just about as happy

3:18

as they make up their minds are gonna be in the middle of the

3:20

Civil War. You know, I have a feeling that's

3:22

not true, but it's a good story anyway,

3:26

I can imagine. Kelly

3:29

says her dad would run Dale Carnegie days

3:32

and if you weren't following the b positive ethos,

3:35

you'd have to go to bed early. She says, there are

3:37

a lot of rules like that. He was strict, but

3:39

the first time Kelly made her dad laugh, she

3:42

knew she'd found an important tool. You

3:44

could say her comedy career started in that moment.

3:47

Being funny was like both a

3:50

way to deflect things and a way to have

3:52

positive attention. So whose attention

3:54

were you hoping to capture? I

3:56

mean maybe my mom's. Like hearing

3:58

my mom laugh was really a nice, nice

4:00

thing, you know. I mean also because my mom

4:03

had a hard life. She had all these kids, she had

4:05

like these useless husbands of varying

4:07

degrees. You know, she had a hard life.

4:09

So I wanted her to I

4:11

don't know, I wanted her to be able to laugh. You know

4:14

when you were a kid, were you aware

4:16

of life being hard for her? Then?

4:22

Only glimpses of it, especially when I

4:24

was younger. Um,

4:28

I think her marriage to my dad also deteriorated

4:31

as a as time passed,

4:33

But she was I

4:36

really don't think I saw her without her makeup till

4:38

I was like in third or fourth grade. Like, she was always

4:41

perfectly made up and perfectly put together.

4:43

You know, she was a person who that was

4:45

important to her, and she really maintained. Um,

4:49

I don't know if it's a facade. She also didn't

4:51

want us to be like frightened, and you know, she wanted

4:53

us to feel secure. I think so, I

4:56

think that I

4:58

didn't necessarily know it, I maybe

5:00

felt it somewhere because I was a

5:02

very sensitive kid. Um.

5:05

So what my parents needed at that time, they

5:07

needed like a cheerful, very

5:09

midwestern kid, right, what they got

5:11

was me. And I came into the world

5:14

screaming as a fully formed,

5:16

winding, coastal sensitive

5:18

queer. I

5:22

was the kind of kid that, um,

5:25

when it rains, do you know what when I was missed the bus

5:27

when it rained, because I would be picking

5:29

up the worms off the pig and

5:31

putting them back on the grass so they wouldn't get running

5:35

like in a city.

5:37

Did you believe in God as a little kid, Yeah,

5:40

very much so. In fact, I can remember there's

5:44

this Bill gaitheror song It's God

5:46

Loves to talk to a little boys while they're fishing.

5:49

It's a very sweet song, and I remember my mom used

5:51

to play it, and I was, you know, thought more myself more as

5:53

a little boy than a little girl. But

5:55

I would go to like one of the ponds, you know,

5:58

and uh like just

6:00

take a stick with a string on it, and like throw it in

6:02

there. And I was like, Okay, now guy's going to talk to me. Well,

6:06

I guess not out loud, okay,

6:09

but um.

6:12

I have this um memory of my grandmother

6:15

when we were staying with her. She

6:17

and my grandpa built a cottage on towards

6:19

Lake. This is beautiful lake in northern

6:22

Michigan, has like this crystal

6:24

blue water. It's spring fed anyway.

6:26

So we'd go and stay with them during parts

6:28

of the summer. And one

6:32

time I was sleeping in the room where my

6:34

grandma's because you know, there's a lot of kids there, so we're all

6:36

like kind of doubled up. And I was sleeping in the room

6:38

my grandma, and I guess she couldn't sleep, and

6:41

so she was praying aloud about all of us.

6:43

And then I remember she came to me and I was like, oh, I

6:45

gotta lay really still, and you

6:48

know, she was praying for me, like,

6:50

oh, you know, helped Kelly to know how

6:53

much Kelly Sue my family calls me,

6:55

helped Kelly Sue, do you know how much you love her? And

6:58

some other stuff too. I don't remember this, but

7:00

I was like, whatever happens my grandmother's

7:03

really praying for me, so maybe I'll be okay.

7:05

You know. I was like probably

7:07

when I was intern, Um,

7:10

were you worried you weren't going to be okay? Well,

7:12

I think there was, like obviously I didn't fit

7:15

in with my family, right. I was like my parents

7:17

really tried hard with the gender stuff, like

7:19

I was so clearly like a little

7:21

boy growing up, you know. Um,

7:23

and they tried really hard. But also like the

7:25

world was against that. You know, even

7:27

now the world is against that. So doing

7:30

better? But yeah,

7:33

and also they were worried for me,

7:35

Like I think they thought that the world was going to crush me,

7:37

you know, but they

7:39

just didn't know what to do. It was like who gave it? You

7:41

know? It was like somebody gave them a wolverine too,

7:44

you know, to raise What do we need

7:46

a wolverine? We don't know? And

7:50

so, um, so you moved from Wisconsin

7:52

to Florida. Um and

7:54

at this time, what's what's your faith

7:56

situation? So my mom

7:59

um wasn't you know, when we were little,

8:01

was not a Christian, but she became a

8:03

born again Christian. And

8:06

then when we moved to Florida,

8:08

I went to my mom sent us to a Christian

8:10

school um,

8:13

and everyone was like, oh, okay,

8:15

like this is a queer kid in the making, Let's see what we

8:17

can do. And I got actually really

8:19

involved in my church, and you

8:22

know, I would say that I was interested

8:26

in what God wanted for me in my life.

8:28

And I felt like, oh, well, there

8:30

there's a God. There must be some reason for me.

8:33

You know, I don't really know what it is, but there

8:35

must be, like some reason that I exist,

8:37

and there's something I'm supposed to do. When

8:40

I was in high school and most of my peers were drinking

8:43

seema it was eight and

8:46

giving each other when I now know to be was

8:49

horrible blow jobs, I

8:52

was attending church three times a week,

8:55

wearing a no Surfing in Hell

8:57

t shirt and

9:01

asking complete strangers, excuse me, have you accepted

9:03

Jesus Christ as your personal savior. I

9:07

was a big bananas born again Christian

9:10

and my mom was a big bananas

9:12

born again Christians, so that made

9:14

her really happy, except for I

9:16

was also a big, huge,

9:19

lifelong tomboy, and that

9:21

made her very sad. One

9:23

day, Kelly came home and found a note from

9:26

her mom. It said, this sounds

9:28

like something you would love and there was

9:30

a Glassie brochure for a missionary training

9:32

program, the Lord's boot Camp. Kelly

9:35

looked at all the pictures of smiling teenagers

9:37

and thought, oh my god, this looks like something

9:39

I would love. When

9:41

I arrived at the Lord's boot Camp, it was essentially

9:44

an unimproved Florida wetlands

9:51

and there was we washed

9:53

our clothes by hand in sulfur

9:56

water we pumped. And

9:58

also the place

10:01

that we were supposed to like wash up, they

10:03

called it God's Bathtub,

10:07

was just this little area of the swamp

10:10

that was attached to another area

10:12

of the swamp with this tiny little drainage

10:15

ditch, and in the other area of the swamp

10:17

were two alligators. When

10:20

we questioned our leaders about it, they were like, now,

10:22

do you really think that an alligator?

10:25

Those alligators are gonna eat five hundred teenagers?

10:27

And I don't really think any of us thought they were gonna eat

10:29

five hundred teenagers, But

10:35

doesn't even one seem like a lot. One

10:41

of the main features of the camp was an obstacle

10:43

course. They'd run it at five am

10:46

every morning. There is a series

10:48

of physical challenges based on biblical themes,

10:51

all designed to help them become better disciples.

10:54

The last obstacle in the obstacle course was

10:56

just called the wall, and it was a series of walls,

10:59

uh, and they each were painted with something

11:01

we would have to get over in order

11:03

to effectively serve Jesus. It

11:06

started with

11:09

lust, and then pride, and then gluttony,

11:11

and the last wall with

11:13

sexual confusion. When

11:16

they weren't running an obstacle course, they

11:18

took classes in how to tie steel, lay

11:20

bricks, run power tools,

11:22

even mixed concrete by hand, all

11:25

in the service of learning how to build God's kingdom.

11:28

I was having a fantastic time.

11:39

It was an entire summer of being a tomboy,

11:42

and I returned home with this newfound zeal,

11:45

also with a new haircut. I had a

11:47

spiral perm and I had also attempted

11:49

to bleach my hair surfer blonde with actual

11:52

bleach, which meant

11:54

by the end of the summer I couldn't even get a comb through

11:56

it. So one of my fault team members

11:58

took a razor and himed off almost all

12:01

the hair on the sides and a lot of the hair on top,

12:03

which of course leaving me a rat

12:05

tail and back. And I looked fantastic.

12:12

When I walked onto my mom's front porch

12:14

dragging my stinky backpack, I

12:17

said, Mom, don't I look like a new person

12:19

in Christ And

12:21

she said, you look a lot the

12:23

same. So the

12:25

teen missions thing is like a general evangelical

12:28

thing, but it was being used

12:30

as like a de facto conversion camp, like my

12:32

mom had hoped that I would come home, you

12:35

know, changed. I mean, they had these

12:37

classes on uh, like

12:39

from Grubby to Grace and God's Gentlemen, which

12:41

now I realized were like gender appropriateness

12:44

classes. It was like, you

12:46

know, just like the world's toughest summer camp. It

12:48

was like it was like if the missionaries of charity around

12:50

a fucking summer camp. That's what it was like. So

12:53

who did she want you to be? I don't know, maybe

12:55

her, you know, I think he was worried.

12:58

She never thought of me as like a maskline

13:01

female. She thought of me as like an ugly female,

13:03

right. And my mom was a very beautiful person.

13:05

She was a very attractive person, and that

13:09

helped her in life. She knew how to use it.

13:11

She knew how to use that attractiveness, and

13:13

it was the kind of also her kind of her stick. You know.

13:16

See, I can remember watching my mom

13:19

put on her makeup her whole life.

13:21

Like I've watched her put on her makeup and talked to her while

13:23

she put on her makeup. I mean, even the smell of makeup

13:26

makes me think of my mom, you know. And

13:28

so what were you searching for then joining

13:30

the MCS? Like you

13:33

know, I was looking for a life that made sense. And

13:36

what did your mom think of you joining? Um?

13:39

I think you know, she wanted me to have health insurance, you

13:41

know, Like, so she was a little bit like, okay,

13:44

you know, so

13:47

you already know Kelly joined the m CS and it

13:49

didn't work out, But what did

13:51

her life look like after she left? Kelly

14:17

was incredibly impressed by the Missionaries of Charity

14:19

when she first encountered them. She admired

14:22

their hard work, and she thought she'd found her community.

14:25

She converted to Catholicism, joined

14:27

the Order, but found she wasn't welcomed

14:29

like other sisters. Maybe some of it was

14:31

her sense of humor, maybe it was her appearance

14:33

or her angry shoulders. Once

14:36

sister described her as scary and

14:38

in the end, not fitting in took a toll on her

14:40

physically. She left flunked

14:42

out, as she puts it, Yeah, I was so

14:44

sad when I left, you know,

14:47

because I was like, all right,

14:49

well, do you guys think this is working out? And they're like, let

14:51

us think about it. No. I mean like

14:53

everyone else that left, they were like

14:55

begging them to stay. Not me, They're like by

14:59

and um, I remember where my mom was with

15:01

my sister. When she took me up, she was like, you seem

15:03

like you're grieving, like that was the word she used. And

15:05

I was like, well, first of all, it's like this big germanic

15:07

goodbye. I'm off to marry Jesus. Goodbye.

15:09

Oh hi, I'm back now, you know what I mean. Like, um,

15:12

so first it was like kind of anticlimactic, but

15:15

it wasn't even just that. It was just like it just felt

15:17

like it just

15:19

felt like you're here, oh here, Jesus,

15:21

here is my life. I give it to you, and Jesus is

15:23

like smack. Everybody wants your dumb gift of your

15:25

dumb life, you know. After

15:27

she left the m c S. She started nursing school,

15:30

joined a softball team, and spent time

15:32

with the Catholic Worker Movement, a progressive

15:35

faith based group, and she was talking

15:37

to a friend there one day and she was like, Kelly,

15:40

like, I know people who are um

15:45

trying to suppress their sexual orientation,

15:47

and I watched them not be able to love the people around

15:49

them the way they should because that's where all their

15:52

energies going. And I was like, you

15:54

know what, that's true, and I've seen that a lot, and

15:56

that's not what I want. Like, if

15:58

I really believe in love, if I really think that

16:00

love is something that changes lives and helps

16:02

people, then I just have to

16:04

be myself. Oh

16:06

yeah. So I was raised a

16:09

strict evangelical Christian and

16:12

when I came out to my mom,

16:14

she ripped up my birth certificate and sent

16:16

it to me. Yeah,

16:18

and I was complaining about it to my

16:20

therapist. So I'm like, oh, that was so past aggressive,

16:22

and she's like, no, Kelly, that was aggressive.

16:26

So I take it to the countercler's office

16:28

and he looked at me and then looked at the pieces and looked

16:30

at me and then looked at the pieces and he thought

16:33

for a minute. He said, we

16:35

get a lot of this from

16:37

people who looked like you, which

16:41

tells you my mom was not as original as

16:43

she thought. She was my

16:45

mom would say that that is

16:47

not what happened. Uh, different

16:50

narrative. Um,

16:54

my mom was a dramatic person. It was a very dramatic

16:57

reaction, like okay. Also even

16:59

when she sent it to me, so I was like, this doesn't you

17:02

can send me my birth certificate all you want. It doesn't

17:04

make me not your kid, you

17:06

know what I mean? Like, that's not how that works. Uh,

17:09

you know. And we didn't really have a relationship for a long

17:11

time, Like I went long periods of time without

17:13

seeing her. Um.

17:16

I think it didn't really even become comedy early

17:18

in my comedy career because

17:22

it was still so unresolved. I

17:25

think it was still to raw

17:27

and me for other people to laugh at it. Kelly

17:34

met Heather at the Newark Airport Hotel during

17:36

a queer conference. They both

17:38

went to Christian High school. They both knew

17:40

all of the words to the chorus of the Trumpet of Jesus,

17:43

and that was that. They started dating long

17:45

distance. At

17:48

the time, Heather wasn't remissioned from ovarian

17:51

cancer. Within the first six

17:53

months of their dating, it came back. Heather

17:56

would call Kelly to get through the night to

17:58

keep her distracted with stories and jokes until

18:00

she could take her next dose of a heavy painkiller.

18:04

It became clear that she was going to die, you

18:06

know, maybe not right away, but eventually. Like

18:08

this wasn't a long term relationship, you

18:10

know. And Heather struggle at first, like she

18:13

was like, well, who starts a relationship when they're so late

18:15

in life? You know, Um,

18:18

it just doesn't seem like it follows the rule book,

18:20

like she you

18:23

know, I think she didn't know if I was going to be

18:25

able to stick it into the end. I knew I was going to be

18:27

able to stick into the end. I knew what I've been through,

18:29

you know. Um,

18:32

but there was something really beautiful about

18:34

being able to be the right person at the right

18:37

time. That was in

18:40

the same way that like the mission and the charity just felt

18:42

like, oh, I'm like, oh, this is what I'm supposed to be doing,

18:44

this is this is I'm answering this

18:46

call. I felt like I was answering

18:48

the call. We kind of try to have

18:50

sense of humor about it or in the house. I mean,

18:53

I'm a stand of comic. And she was a total smartass,

18:56

so able to the two of us. For

18:58

example, one day when she was really she had been on keyboard

19:00

for a one time. She wasn't feeling that well, and I

19:03

called her from the supermarket. I said, um, is

19:05

there anything I can bring you? And

19:08

there is a long silence and she said, yeah,

19:12

how about a quarter pounds of a Will to

19:14

Live? Oh God

19:18

fine.

19:26

So I was like, well she's going there. I'm gonna go there too.

19:29

And I was like, oh, honey, you know how it isn't a trigger.

19:31

Jose and Billy had organic

19:33

and now I don't get it all out, so

19:39

just already that she came back, She's like, huh damn.

19:47

Kelly calls the day how they died, Pudding Day,

19:50

how they chose to end her life surrounded by chosen

19:52

family with a lethal dose of medication

19:55

mixed into a pudding cup. All

19:58

this time through the real relationship

20:00

Head There's Illness Nursing School

20:03

comedy sets, Kelly's relationship

20:05

with her mom remainstreamed until

20:08

her stepfather's dementia became worse and

20:10

she flew home to help. He

20:12

was a retired army colonel and everyone still

20:14

called him the colonel, and

20:17

so lost of people when they developed dementia,

20:20

they forget the names of their kids or where they live,

20:22

or you know, they're most fond childhood

20:24

memories. That is not what happened to the colonel.

20:26

The colonel forgot. He was a jerk, I

20:30

think, because he forgot where the scotch was. So

20:34

I went to my mom's home and helped

20:36

her set up hospice. And the colonel

20:38

was lovely to me, was like, oh color, and I just

20:41

I love your I love your haircutt Soldier.

20:43

I love the ultimate compliment, I

20:46

love your haircuts Soldier. That's oh Ron, That's

20:48

fantastic all. And we

20:51

thought that he might not make it until Christmas. And

20:53

he was really so you know, cognitively

20:56

impaired at that point that he couldn't even follow sitcom.

20:58

So my mom loved the christ his tree, and

21:00

he asked her just to turn off the lights and he just watched the

21:03

tree, and every so often he would say, that's

21:05

a heck of a tree, and ants, that's a heck of a tree.

21:08

And so I would sit with my mom, watch her

21:11

as she would put on makeup, and I wanted

21:13

to tell her it was gonna be okay, but

21:15

I knew it wasn't that, so I

21:18

just sat with her. I

21:21

don't know. Something really changed that year. We

21:24

just talked about our lives and you know, kind of what

21:26

was important in life and what wasn't and not

21:29

having any regrets and um,

21:31

and it healed in a way that I had never thought

21:34

was possible. So the colonel died

21:36

a few days before Christmas. And

21:38

when people came to drop off food and

21:41

UM saying, you know, send their

21:43

condolen says. My Mom's response

21:45

was, this is my daughter, Kelly. She's

21:47

also a widow. She lost her spouse

21:49

as well. What's

22:00

a moment that happened that you would have never

22:03

expected to came?

22:06

Um, she came to watch

22:09

me perform at the Stonewall Inn

22:11

in June. The

22:15

story of Kelly's mom at the historic Stonewall

22:17

Inn in a moment. All

22:40

right, so my mom. Nine years I've been performing,

22:42

she has never seen me perform. You know where My mom

22:44

wanted to come see me perform in the

22:46

middle of June on the anniversary

22:48

of Stonewall at the Stonewall Inn.

22:52

The gayest thing ever, Right, it's the gayest thing I've

22:54

ever done. Guess who I was opening for? Lenny

22:56

Breedlove. Who

23:00

Lenny Breed Love Performance Artists

23:02

queer performance artist. Now, you remember Lenny's

23:04

last show where Lenny like had a little stuffed

23:06

animals like Hi, I identify as an elephant.

23:09

HI identifies a teddy bear, right, very

23:11

cute, very tame. I thought that

23:13

that's the show that Lenny would be doing. No,

23:16

oh no, in the show, my mom came to Lenny

23:19

walked on the stage wearing nothing but a dick, and

23:27

also, for no apparent reason

23:29

that I could figure out, there

23:31

was twenty minutes of Lenny peeing into

23:33

a bucket on stage. Now, if

23:36

you've ever been upstairs at the Stone Wall, you know

23:38

that the stage is maybe two or three

23:40

feet from the front row where my mom was sitting.

23:45

So I'm sitting in the audience thinking my

23:47

mom and Lindy breed Love are

23:49

having a golden shower scene.

23:54

And then I said the words I have not said

23:56

before or since. I turned her

23:58

friend, and I said, would you please get my mom

24:01

some more wine?

24:15

So, um,

24:18

we got through that incident more or less

24:20

okay, But oh the questions the next day

24:23

at breakfast, so

24:25

she's like trying to figure things out, right, So she's like,

24:28

so there is a woman a man, no, a woman,

24:31

No, a woman dressed like a man sitting

24:33

on the lap of the woman. The

24:36

man, No, the woman dressed like a

24:38

man. Is that

24:40

the way it always is? By

24:45

this time, Kelly had met her partner, Cheryl,

24:47

a writer into poet. Cheryl was

24:49

at the stone Wall performance too, and Kelly

24:51

introduced her to her mom. She was like, she's

24:53

beautiful and I was like, yeah, I know, she's um.

24:58

Yeah. She was like, Kelly,

25:01

UM, in your subculture? And I was

25:03

like, I didn't even know she knew the word subculture.

25:06

Uh, in your subculture? Are

25:08

you considered attractive? And I was like, yeah,

25:10

I'm actually in my subculture, I am

25:12

considered attractive. There's like some women that want

25:15

to date a masculine female. Ah.

25:17

And she was like, oh, I didn't have any idea.

25:19

And that actually just

25:21

made her so relieved, you know.

25:24

And I think she started thinking me as more

25:26

her son than her daughter, and I think that helped to

25:29

um. Wow. Yeah.

25:32

I was curious at that moment at stone Wall,

25:34

at that performance, if like seeing

25:36

your mom there and your friends there and your

25:38

girlfriend they're like all hanging

25:40

out having this time. Does

25:43

that sort of like I mean, when I

25:45

think back of like you as a teen having

25:47

these questions about your purpose. You

25:50

know, that moment where you sort of

25:53

done in your searching and did you have answers?

25:58

I felt happy for sure. I mean I think,

26:01

you know, I don't know if anyone's ever done and they're

26:03

searching, you know. Um,

26:09

it was a moment who that it

26:12

felt like a lot of people worked really

26:14

hard to get to that moment helped

26:17

me get to that moment, you know, like

26:19

my mom's gay hairdresser. You know, my mom

26:21

had been watching Ellen for a long time, you

26:25

know, Lenny even who

26:27

like when they saw my mom just gave my mom

26:29

a big hug, like they've been waiting their whole lives to hug

26:31

each other. You know. Um,

26:34

it seemed like there was some people who are interested

26:36

in me and her being happy and me and her being

26:39

friends, and that's really nice, you know.

26:42

And also that she got to experience it, you

26:44

know, she got to experience what it feels like to

26:46

be to be loved by chosen

26:48

family mhm.

26:52

And then unbelievably, Cheryl

26:54

was diagnosed with Hodgkins lymphoma. And

26:57

how did your mom and Cheryl get along? My

27:00

My mom loves Cheryl. Um. Yeah,

27:03

like when Cheryl started chemo. My

27:05

mom bought her bunny slippers and like

27:08

fussed over her, and like my

27:10

mom triked really hard to like give a Cheryl

27:12

some mom energy. And Cheryl really appreciated

27:14

that, and I appreciate it. And

27:17

my sister was like, weren't you jealous? And I was like no,

27:19

in a way, that's like perfect because I get to observe

27:22

that love towards somebody I love, and

27:24

it's not complicated the way it would be between us,

27:27

you know, so I actually

27:29

really appreciate that. Kelly

27:32

says that whenever there's a tragedy in her life,

27:34

she does a show. When Cheryl

27:37

died, she booked a whole Southern comedy

27:39

tour. I don't know how people get through stuff

27:41

without having an outlet of writing about it and

27:43

performing by it and trying to make it funny. I don't really

27:45

know. It just seems like, wow,

27:48

I it seems brave. I

27:52

want things. I'm being involved with someone

27:54

who has to see yoursellness, and I really like it

27:56

gives you a perspective. Um

27:59

It definitely lenges the

28:01

assumptions that the universe is a good place right,

28:03

definitely challenges those assumptions, like, you

28:05

know, like those bumper stickers and say God

28:08

is good all the time. I'm

28:11

like, well, by the God is good, but about

28:13

the all the time part, right, because

28:16

some kids getting nukedia and some kid's

28:18

getta pooy.

28:21

That's okay, you can laugh at my

28:25

therapist totally does. Kelly

28:31

lives in Brooklyn in an apartment she affectionately

28:34

calls Queer study Hall. There's

28:36

always a revolving door of friends coming through. She's

28:39

a community school director and she works part

28:41

time as a nurse, and she's developing

28:43

a new comedy tour fifty churches

28:45

in fifty states ask

28:48

for her faith. Kelly stopped going to church

28:50

after her time in the Missionaries of Charity.

28:53

Actually, if you look at the world, it does seem

28:55

like there is a God, but it seems like God hates

28:58

us, right, That's what it really looks like. You

29:00

know, um, the Haiti earthquake

29:03

and then a color epidemic, you know, like come

29:05

on. But after a while she

29:08

discovered it was actually harder not to be involved

29:10

in a spiritual practice than it was to do it.

29:12

Why fight it? So she found

29:15

a church in New York, a very open church.

29:17

In fact, she says, the pastor once said that even atheists

29:19

are welcome, and I was like, I think this is my

29:21

church, the church where they don't care what you believe

29:24

in. But

29:29

that almost in a sense doesn't matter. What matters

29:31

is like the community and the connection and

29:33

trying to find meaning. You know, the

29:36

meaning is like for me, the meaning

29:39

is the spirituality, like trying to find meaning

29:41

in like whatever I experience, like try and convert

29:44

whatever difficulty it is into

29:47

something that can help other people. Did

30:00

you talk about um,

30:03

your mom's death with her? Did you talk

30:05

about death with her? Oh? All

30:07

the time. It's like her favorite subject

30:09

for the last five years. Kelly's

30:11

mom died at the end of April after

30:14

a year and assisted living and then hospice.

30:17

She had a form of blood cancer. Kelly

30:20

flew to Florida to be with her. Her

30:22

mom didn't ask her to come because, as Kelly

30:24

says, she's not a complainer, but Kelly

30:27

went anyway. When we were kids, like

30:29

I remember being like, don't put me on a

30:31

machine, and we're like, Mom, we're just going through the McDonald's

30:33

drive through right now, but okay, don't put

30:35

on a machine. Got it? And she

30:38

always said, I'm not afraid of dying.

30:40

I'm afraid of um,

30:43

I'm afraid of suffering, and I'm afraid of being alone.

30:47

Every conversation for the last year, she said,

30:50

they shoot horses, don't they. She really was

30:52

like she's I think it made her really, you

30:54

know, she had a very honest relationship, I

30:56

think with God. But she

30:59

always said, like, I just keep

31:01

asking why am I still here. Kelly

31:04

talked to the staff at the assist at living facility,

31:06

and they'd say things like I love your mom's

31:08

laugh, and I

31:10

just want to tell you this great thing your mom did for me.

31:14

At one point, even the director of the facility was

31:16

in tears talking about Kelly's mom.

31:18

So Kelly had an answer to her mom's question.

31:21

I came back and I was like, Mom, like, I

31:24

I can't tell you why you were here,

31:26

but I can tell you, like

31:28

why God gave you

31:30

this extra year that you has been so

31:32

difficult, But I can

31:35

tell you that you made people's lives.

31:37

People at a assisted

31:39

living facility in Florida,

31:41

in the middle of a pandemic, the epicenter

31:44

right, you made their lives easier and some

31:46

of the like the hardest times they will ever

31:48

imagine. I was like you change,

31:50

like you brought light in this

31:52

like terrible difficult

31:55

year. Um, you know, and

31:57

I was holding her hand when she died, so she

31:59

got she got what she wanted, you

32:01

know, So she wasn't

32:05

and she wasn't suffering. So do

32:09

you think that your time with the Missionaries

32:11

of Charity, all this sitting in silence

32:14

with others helped

32:16

you be there for your mom?

32:19

I mean sure, you know, we spend years doing

32:21

that. You develop that capacity,

32:24

and you develop also that it's not an uncomfortable

32:26

thing, like we could be quiet, you know. Um.

32:31

Even like one of the hospice doctors was

32:33

like, yeah, usually when you come into

32:35

her room, people are just like and there's

32:37

an unconsciousnation. People are just chattering

32:39

at them or talking around them,

32:42

you know, even though we know the hearing is the last

32:44

to go. And I was like, well I don't there's

32:46

not some secret I need to tell my mom now, Like

32:48

we've known she was going to die for a long time

32:51

and and she, uh, like we've

32:53

said what we needed to say, Like what else am I going to

32:55

say now? You know? Um? But

32:57

I think like the comfort with silence

32:59

is I

33:02

guess the two things are like you know, being a nun, and

33:04

also stand up comedy, because definitely stand up comedy.

33:06

You know, you have to when you have to wait for

33:08

the laugh. That silence feels like a really long

33:10

time, but if you can hold the silence, you'll get a bigger

33:13

laugh. So I talk

33:15

about that, And

33:18

so now people ask me where I am theologically

33:21

um, And I don't really worry so much about the afterlife,

33:23

except for maybe that it just sounds exhausting,

33:26

like another life after this

33:28

one. I

33:30

only want that if I can sit on a couch and watch

33:33

HBO documentaries. Otherwise I'm out. But

33:35

uh, you know, there was an attraction of like,

33:38

you know, baby butch nuns and priests

33:40

and drag and groovy smelling incense. But

33:42

also there was like the wonder of like thinking

33:45

you knew all the answers, then that if everyone thought

33:48

like you, the world would just be fine. There was

33:50

a lot of power in that um.

33:55

And sometimes even now, I'll

33:57

I'll hear like him being sung and Catholic

34:00

church as I walked by, and I'll get

34:02

kind of nostalgic, and I was think, oh

34:04

well, and then remember, you know, I

34:06

was married to that guy, and he was a little bit of a

34:08

Jerk. I'm Kelly Dunham.

34:10

Thank you. M

34:23

m m

34:26

hm. This

34:30

episode was written and produced by Emily Foreman.

34:32

Our editor is Rob Rosenthal, Andrea

34:35

Swah is our digital producer. Special

34:37

thanks to Amy Gaines, Sarah oh Lender, Bethan

34:39

Macaluso, Travis Dunlap, and consulting

34:41

producer Mary Johnson. Her memoir

34:44

and Unquenchable Thirst provided inspiration for this

34:46

series. Our executive producers

34:48

are Jessica Alpert and John Parati at Rococo

34:50

Punch and Katrina Norvelle at iHeart Radio.

34:54

For photos and more details on this series, follow

34:56

us on Instagram at Rococo Punch. You

34:58

can reach out via emailed to the Turning

35:01

at for Coco Punch dot com.

35:03

I'm America Lance, thanks for listening.

35:06

M m

35:10

m m

35:26

m m

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mmmmm