Speaker 1: I would like to bring out onto the stage America's
Speaker 1: favorite X noun skateboard riding, houseboat, dwelling, nurturing, sweet, adorable, thoughtful,
Speaker 1: thought provoking, anti racist comic, Miss Kelly Dunham.
Speaker 2: From a Cocoa Punch and iHeartRadio. This is the Turning America.
Speaker 3: Lance.
Speaker 2: There are still four episodes left this season, but today
Speaker 2: we have a bonus for you. It's a little different.
Speaker 3: So like most of you, I used to be a nun,
Speaker 3: very relatable. That's very relatable and stand up comedy to
Speaker 3: get up on starts to talk about how you used
Speaker 3: to be a nun and people, you know, like sometimes
Speaker 3: in straight clubs, people will be like, oh yeah, whatever
Speaker 3: system Mary Bulldyke. But I used to be Ann with
Speaker 3: the outfit and everything.
Speaker 2: Uh So, you know Kelly Dunham. For previous episodes, she's
Speaker 2: a former sister who's missed. Told her she walked like
Speaker 2: her shoulders were angry. But there's so much more to
Speaker 2: Kelly's story, all these twists and turns.
Speaker 3: All of my happiest childhood memories were learning words.
Speaker 4: I remember asking my mom what does that bill?
Speaker 3: I mean? She goes, well, when do you feel like
Speaker 3: you both love something and maybe you don't love it
Speaker 3: so much all I wants and I, oh, my god,
Speaker 3: that's exactly how I feel about you.
Speaker 4: What does my mom had plants in here? You guys
Speaker 4: are oh.
Speaker 2: One of our producers, Emily Foreman, talked with Kelly about
Speaker 2: her life before the Missionaries of Charity and after about
Speaker 2: her faith, about her comedy.
Speaker 5: So I just want to go back, back, back, back,
Speaker 5: back back. Uh, what's the first joke you ever told?
Speaker 2: But mostly about her complicated relationship with her mom.
Speaker 4: So I'm the youngest of seven.
Speaker 3: My mom had had six other kids with as many
Speaker 3: alcoholic husbands, which I think is really impressive to find
Speaker 3: that one or two, but a number of alcoholics. Sometimes
Speaker 3: you just have our types, which you know when you
Speaker 3: think about life. Okay, so what the thought process like?
Speaker 3: You know, my last five marriages to alcoholics ended in
Speaker 3: financial ruin. But I've got the right alcoholic. So I
Speaker 3: really I appreciate my mom's level of hope.
Speaker 2: So that's a rural Wisconsin accent, and you hear in
Speaker 2: Kelly's voice she grew up there hard work and not
Speaker 2: talking about feelings with the family code. So was Dale Carnegie,
Speaker 2: the author of How to win friends and influence people.
Speaker 2: It was an incredibly popular book, and Kelly's dad made
Speaker 2: the books philosophy part of life at home.
Speaker 3: Well, first, my dad would frequently mornings. He would come down.
Speaker 3: We had to be sitting at the table at six am,
Speaker 3: and he would slap his hand on the table and say,
Speaker 3: acting through the ass. Second, you'll be enthusiastic, and most
Speaker 3: people are just about as happy as they make up
Speaker 3: their mind they're gonna be, which she would attribute to
Speaker 3: Dale Carnegie and sometimes to Abraham Lincoln, although I've since
Speaker 3: heard that it was Dale Carnegie quoting Abraham Lincoln. But
Speaker 3: it doesn't sound like Abraham Lincoln because Abraham Lincoln a
Speaker 3: clinical depression. I bet he did not say that most
Speaker 3: people are just about as happy as they make up
Speaker 3: their minds are going to be in the middle of
Speaker 3: the Civil War. You know, I have a feeling that's
Speaker 3: not true, but it's a good story anyway. Can imagine how.
Speaker 2: Kelly says her dad would run Dale Carnegie days and
Speaker 2: if you weren't following the b positive ethos, you'd have
Speaker 2: to go to bed early. She says, there are a
Speaker 2: lot of rules like that. He was strict, but the
Speaker 2: first time Kelly made her dad laugh, she knew she'd
Speaker 2: found an important tool. You could say her comedy career
Speaker 2: started in that moment.
Speaker 3: Being funny was like both a way to deflect things
Speaker 3: and a way to have positive attention.
Speaker 5: So whose attention were you hoping to capture?
Speaker 3: I mean maybe my mom's. Like hearing my mom laugh
Speaker 3: was really a nice, nice thing, you know. I mean
Speaker 3: also because my mom had a hard life. She had
Speaker 3: all these kids, she had like these useless husbands of
Speaker 3: varying degrees. You know, she had a hard life. So
Speaker 3: I wanted her to I don't know, I wanted her
Speaker 3: to be able to laugh.
Speaker 5: You know when you were a kid, were you aware
Speaker 5: of life being hard for her? Then?
Speaker 3: Only glimpses of it, especially when I was younger. I
Speaker 3: think her marriage to my dad also deteriorated as time passed,
Speaker 3: but she was I really don't think I saw her
Speaker 3: without her makeup till I was like in third or
Speaker 3: fourth grade. Like, she was always perfectly made up and
Speaker 3: perfectly put together. You know, she was a person who
Speaker 3: that was important to her, and she really maintained I
Speaker 3: don't know if it's a facade. She also didn't want
Speaker 3: us to be like frightened, and you know, she wanted
Speaker 3: us to feel secure. I think so. I think that
Speaker 3: I didn't necessarily know it, maybe felt it somewhere because
Speaker 3: I was a very sensitive kid. So what my parents
Speaker 3: needed at that time, they needed like a cheerful, very
Speaker 3: midwestern kid, right, what they got was me, and I
Speaker 3: came into the world screaming as a fully formed, whining,
Speaker 3: coastal sensitive queer.
Speaker 4: I was the kind of kid that when it rained, do.
Speaker 3: You know why when I was missed the bus when
Speaker 3: it rained, because I would be picking up the worms
Speaker 3: off the pavement and putting the mac on the grass
Speaker 3: so they.
Speaker 4: Wouldn't get running out for it, like in a city.
Speaker 4: That's like, Okay, did you believe.
Speaker 5: In God as a little kid.
Speaker 3: Yeah, very much so. In fact, I can remember there's
Speaker 3: this Bill Gaither song It's God Loves to talk to
Speaker 3: little boys while They're fishing. It's a very sweet song,
Speaker 3: and I can remember when my mom used to play it,
Speaker 3: and I was, you know, thought myself more as a
Speaker 3: little boy than a little girl. But I would go
Speaker 3: to like one of the ponds, you know, and like
Speaker 3: just take a stick with a string on it and
Speaker 3: like throw it in there, and I was like, Okay,
Speaker 3: now God's going to talk to me. Well, I guess
Speaker 3: not out loud, okay. But I have this memory of
Speaker 3: my grandmother when we were staying with her. She and
Speaker 3: my grandpa built a cottage on towards Lake This this
Speaker 3: beautiful lake in northern Michigan that has like this crystal
Speaker 3: blue water, so it's spring fed anyway. So we'd go
Speaker 3: and stay with them during parts of the summer. And
Speaker 3: one time I was sleeping in the room where my
Speaker 3: grandma's because you know, there's a lot of kids there,
Speaker 3: so we were all like kind of doubled up, and
Speaker 3: I was sleeping in the room with my grandma, and
Speaker 3: I guess she couldn't sleep, and so she was praying
Speaker 3: aloud about all of us. And then I remember she
Speaker 3: came to me and I was like, oh, I gotta
Speaker 3: live really still, and you know, she was praying for me, like, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, help Kelly to know how much Kelly Sue,
Speaker 3: as my family calls me, help Kelly Sue to know
Speaker 3: how much you love her, and some other stuff too.
Speaker 3: I don't remember this, but I was like, whatever happens,
Speaker 3: my grandmother's really praying for me, so maybe I'll be okay.
Speaker 3: You know. I was like probably when I was eight
Speaker 3: or not, were you worried you weren't going to be okay? Well,
Speaker 3: I think there was like obviously I didn't fit in
Speaker 3: with my family, right. I was like my parents really
Speaker 3: tried hard with the gender stuff, like I was so
Speaker 3: clearly like a little boy growing up, you know, and
Speaker 3: they tried really hard. But also like the world was
Speaker 3: against that. You know, even now the world is against that.
Speaker 3: So doing better. But yeah, and also they were worried
Speaker 3: for me, Like I think they thought that the world
Speaker 3: was going to crush me, you know, but they just
Speaker 3: didn't know what to do. It was like who gave it?
Speaker 3: You know, it was like somebody gave them a wolverine
Speaker 3: to you know, to race. What do we need a wolverine?
Speaker 3: We don't know.
Speaker 5: And so so you moved from Wisconsin to Florida, and
Speaker 5: at this time, what's what's your faith situation?
Speaker 3: So my mom wasn't you know, when we were little,
Speaker 3: was not a Christian, but she became a born again Christian.
Speaker 3: And then when we moved to Florida, I went to
Speaker 3: my mom sent us to a Christian school, and everyone
Speaker 3: was like, oh, okay, like this is a queer kid
Speaker 3: in the making, Let's see what we can do. And
Speaker 3: I got actually really involved in my church, and you know,
Speaker 3: I would say that I was interested in what God
Speaker 3: wanted for me in my life. And I felt like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: if there's a God, there must be some reason for me.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't really know what it is, but
Speaker 3: there must be, like some reason that I exist, and
Speaker 3: there's something I'm supposed to do. When I was in
Speaker 3: high school and most of my peers were drinking zeema
Speaker 3: it was the eighties and giving each other what I
Speaker 3: now know to be was horrible blowjobs. I was attending
Speaker 3: church three times a week, wearing a no Surfing in
Speaker 3: Hell t shirt and asking complete strangers, excuse me, have
Speaker 3: you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior. I was
Speaker 3: a big bananas born again Christian and my mom was
Speaker 3: a big bananas born again Christian, so that made her
Speaker 3: really happy, except for I was also a big, huge,
Speaker 3: lifelong tomboy, and that made her very sad.
Speaker 2: One day, Kelly came home and found a note from
Speaker 2: her mom. It said, this sounds like something you would love,
Speaker 2: and there was a glossy brochure for a missionary training
Speaker 2: program the Lord's boot Camp. Kelly looked at all the
Speaker 2: pictures of smiling teenagers and thought.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, this looks like something I would love.
Speaker 3: When I arrived at the Lord's boot Camp, it was
Speaker 3: essentially an unimproved Florida wetlands and there was we washed
Speaker 3: our clothes by hand in sulfur water we pumped. And
Speaker 3: also the place that we were supposed to like wash up,
Speaker 3: they called it a God's bathtub, was just this little
Speaker 3: area of the swamp that was attached to another area
Speaker 3: of the swamp with this tiny little drainage ditch, and
Speaker 3: in the other area of the swamp were two alligators.
Speaker 3: When we questioned our leaders about it, they were like, now,
Speaker 3: do you really think that an alligator? Those alligators are
Speaker 3: gonna eat five hundred teenagers? And I don't really think
Speaker 3: any of us thought they were gonna eat five hundred teenagers.
Speaker 3: But doesn't even one seem like a lot.
Speaker 2: One of the main features of the camp was an
Speaker 2: obstacle course. They'd run it at five am every morning.
Speaker 2: There is a series of physical challenges based on biblical themes,
Speaker 2: all designed to help them become better disciples.
Speaker 3: The last obstacle in the obstacle course was just called
Speaker 3: the wall, and it was a series of walls, and
Speaker 3: they each were painted with something we would have to
Speaker 3: get over in order to effectively serve Jesus.
Speaker 4: It started.
Speaker 3: With lust, and then pride and then gluttony, and the
Speaker 3: last wall was sexual confusion.
Speaker 2: When they weren't running an obstacle course, they took classes
Speaker 2: in how to tie steel, lay bricks, run power tools,
Speaker 2: even mix concrete by hand, all in the service of
Speaker 2: learning how to build God's kingdom.
Speaker 3: I was having a fantastic time. It was an entire
Speaker 3: summer of being a tomboy, and I returned home with
Speaker 3: this newfound zeal, also with a new haircut. I had
Speaker 3: a spiral perm and I had also attempted to bleach
Speaker 3: my hair surfer blonde with actual bleach, which meant by
Speaker 3: the end of the summer I couldn't even get a
Speaker 3: comb through it. So one of my fellow team members
Speaker 3: took a razor and off almost all the hair on
Speaker 3: the sides and a lot of the hair on top,
Speaker 3: which of course leaving me a rat tail in back.
Speaker 3: And I looked fantastic when I walked onto my mom's
Speaker 3: front porch, dragging my stinky backpack. I said, Mom, don't
Speaker 3: I look like a new person in Christ And she said,
Speaker 3: you look a lot the same. So the teen Missions
Speaker 3: thing is like a general evangelical thing, but it was
Speaker 3: being used as like a de facto conversion camp, like
Speaker 3: my mom had hoped that I would come home, you know, changed.
Speaker 3: I mean, they had these classes on like from Grubby
Speaker 3: to Grace and God's Gentlemen, which now I realize were
Speaker 3: like gender appropriateness classes. It was like, you know, just
Speaker 3: like the world's toughest summer camp. It was like it
Speaker 3: was like if the missionaries of charity around a fucking
Speaker 3: summer camp. That's what it was like.
Speaker 5: So who did she want you to be?
Speaker 3: I don't know, maybe her, you know, like I think
Speaker 3: she was worried. She never thought of me is like
Speaker 3: a mask on female. She thought of me as like
Speaker 3: an ugly female, right. And my mom was a very
Speaker 3: beautiful person. She was a very attractive person, and that
Speaker 3: helped her in life. She knew how to use it.
Speaker 3: She knew how to use that attractiveness and it was
Speaker 3: her kind of also, her kind of her stick, you know.
Speaker 3: And I can remember watching my mom put on her
Speaker 3: makeup her whole life. Like I've watched her put out
Speaker 3: her makeup and talked to her while she put on
Speaker 3: her makeup. I mean, even the smell of makeup like
Speaker 3: makes me think of my mom, you know.
Speaker 5: And so what were you searching for then in joining
Speaker 5: the MCS.
Speaker 3: Like I, you know, I was looking for a life
Speaker 3: that made sense.
Speaker 5: And what did your mom think of you joining?
Speaker 3: I think, you know, she wanted me to have health insurance,
Speaker 3: you know, Like, so she was a little bit like, Okay,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: So you already know. Kelly joined the MCS and it
Speaker 2: didn't work out, But what did her life look like
Speaker 2: after she left? Kelly was incredibly impressed by the Missionaries
Speaker 2: of Charity when she first encountered them. She admired their
Speaker 2: hard work, and she thought she'd found her community. She
Speaker 2: converted to Catholicism, joined the order, but found she wasn't
Speaker 2: welcomed like other sisters. Maybe some of it was her
Speaker 2: sense of humor, maybe it was her appearance or her
Speaker 2: angry shoulders. One sister described her as scary and in
Speaker 2: the end, not fitting in took a toll on her physically.
Speaker 2: She left flunked out as she puts it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was so sad when I laugh, you know,
Speaker 3: because I was like, all right, well do you guys
Speaker 3: think this is working out? And they're like, let us
Speaker 3: think about it. No, you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 3: everyone else that left, they were like begging them to stay.
Speaker 3: Not me, they were like bye. And I remember or
Speaker 3: my mom was with my sister when she picked me up.
Speaker 3: She was like, you seem like you're grieving, like that
Speaker 3: was the word she used. And I was like, well,
Speaker 3: first of all, it's like this big dramatic goodbye, I'm off.
Speaker 4: To marry Jesus. Goodbye.
Speaker 3: Oh hi, I'm back now, you know what I mean. Like,
Speaker 3: so first it was like kind of anti climactic, but
Speaker 3: it wasn't even just that. It was just like it
Speaker 3: just felt like it just felt like you're here, Oh here, Jesus,
Speaker 3: here is my life. I give it to you, and
Speaker 3: Jesus is like smack. Everybody watched your dumb gift of
Speaker 3: your dumb life, you know.
Speaker 2: After she left the MCS, she started nursing school, joined
Speaker 2: a softball team, and spent time with the Catholic Worker Movement,
Speaker 2: a progressive faith based group, and she was talking to
Speaker 2: a friend there one day.
Speaker 3: And she was like, Kelly, like, I know people who
Speaker 3: are trying to suppress their sexual orientation and I watched
Speaker 3: them not be able to love the people around them
Speaker 3: the way they should because that's where all their energy
Speaker 3: is going. And I was like, you know what, that's true,
Speaker 3: and I've seen that a lot, and that's not what
Speaker 3: I want. Like, if I really believe in love, if
Speaker 3: I think that love is something that changes lives and
Speaker 3: helps people, then I just have to be myself.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 3: So I was raised a strict evangelical Christian and when
Speaker 3: I came out to my mom, she ripped up my
Speaker 3: birth certificate and sent it to me.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I was complaining about it to my therapist.
Speaker 3: So I'm like, oh, that was so passive aggressive, and
Speaker 3: she's like, no, killing that was aggressive, assive. So I
Speaker 3: took it to the countercler's office and he looked at
Speaker 3: me and then looked at the pieces and looked at
Speaker 3: me and then looked at the pieces and he thought
Speaker 3: for a minute, and he said, we get a lot
Speaker 3: of this from people who look like you, which tells
Speaker 3: you my mom was not as original as she thought
Speaker 3: she was. My mom would say that that is not
Speaker 3: what happened. Different narrative. My mom was a dramatic person,
Speaker 3: you know. It was a very dramatic reaction, like okay. Also,
Speaker 3: even when she sent it to me, I was like,
Speaker 3: this doesn't You can send me my birth certificate all
Speaker 3: you want. It doesn't make me not your kid, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean? Like, that's not how that works,
Speaker 3: you know. And we didn't really have a relationship for
Speaker 3: a long time, Like I went long periods of time
Speaker 3: without seeing her. I think it didn't really even become
Speaker 3: comedy early in my comedy career because it was still
Speaker 3: so unresolved. I think it was still to raw and
Speaker 3: me for other people to laugh at it.
Speaker 2: Kelly met Heather at the Newark Airport Hotel during a
Speaker 2: queer conference. They both went to Christian high school. They
Speaker 2: both knew all of the words to the chorus of
Speaker 2: the Trumpet of Jesus, and that was that they started
Speaker 2: dating long distance. At the time, Heather wasn't remission from
Speaker 2: ovarian cancer. Within the first six months of their dating,
Speaker 2: it came back. Heather would call Kelly to get through
Speaker 2: the night, to keep her distracted with stories and jokes
Speaker 2: until she could take her next dose. Of a heavy painkiller.
Speaker 3: It became clear that she was going to die, you know,
Speaker 3: maybe not right away, but eventually. Like this wasn't a
Speaker 3: long term relationship, you know, and Heather struggled at first,
Speaker 3: like she was like, well, who starts a relationship when
Speaker 3: they're so late in life? You know, it just doesn't
Speaker 3: seem like it follows the rule book, like she you know,
Speaker 3: I think she didn't know if I was going to
Speaker 3: be able to stick it into the end. I knew
Speaker 3: I was going to be able to stick in to
Speaker 3: the end. I knew what I'd been through, you know,
Speaker 3: But there was something really beautiful about being able to
Speaker 3: be the right person at the right time.
Speaker 4: That was.
Speaker 3: In the same way that like the mission of the
Speaker 3: charity just felt like, oh, I'm like, oh, this is
Speaker 3: what I'm supposed to be doing, this is this is
Speaker 3: I'm answering this call. I felt like I was answering
Speaker 3: the call. We kind of try to have sense of
Speaker 3: humor about it or in the house. I mean, I'm
Speaker 3: a standup comic and she was a total smart ass.
Speaker 3: So it was the two of us, Like, for example,
Speaker 3: one day when she was really she had been on
Speaker 3: chemo for a long time, she wasn't feeling that well,
Speaker 3: and I called her from the supermarket and I said,
Speaker 3: is there anything okay ring you? And this is a
Speaker 3: long silence, and she said, yeah, how about.
Speaker 4: A quarter pound of a Will to Live?
Speaker 3: Oh god wine. So I was like, well, she's going there.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna go there too. And I was like, oh, honey,
Speaker 3: you know how it is. I'm gonna Trader Joe's and
Speaker 3: they only had organic and now they're all out.
Speaker 4: To just write that. She came back. She's like hot, damn.
Speaker 2: Kelly calls the Day How the Died Pudding Day, how
Speaker 2: they chose to end her life, surrounded by chosen family
Speaker 2: with a lethal dose of medication mixed into a pudding cup.
Speaker 2: All this time through the real relationship had There's Illness
Speaker 2: nursing school comedy sets, Kelly's relationship with her mom remained
Speaker 2: strained until her stepfather's dementia became worse and she flew
Speaker 2: home to help. He was a retired army colonel and
Speaker 2: everyone still called him the colonel, And so most people.
Speaker 4: When they developed dementia, they forget.
Speaker 3: The names of their kids or where they live, or
Speaker 3: you know, they're most fun childhood memories. That is not
Speaker 3: what happened to the colonel. The colonel forgot. He was
Speaker 3: a jerk, I think, because he forgot where the scotch was.
Speaker 3: So I went to my mom's home and helped her
Speaker 3: sent up hospice.
Speaker 4: And the colonel was lovely Timmy.
Speaker 3: It was like, oh color, I just I love your
Speaker 3: I love your haircut, soldier, I love the ultimate compliment, I.
Speaker 4: Love your haircuts. Sold her. That's oh man, that's fantastic. Ah.
Speaker 4: And we thought that he might not make it until Christmas.
Speaker 3: And he was really so you know, cognitively impaired at
Speaker 3: that point that he couldn't even follow a sigcom. So
Speaker 3: my mom loot the christ this tree and he asked
Speaker 3: her just to turn off the lights, and he just
Speaker 3: watched the tree, and every so often he would say,
Speaker 3: that's a heck of a tree.
Speaker 4: Ads, that's a heck of a tree.
Speaker 3: And so I would sit with my mom watch her
Speaker 3: as she would put on bakeup, and I wanted to
Speaker 3: tell her it was gonna be okay, but I knew
Speaker 3: it wasn't, and so.
Speaker 4: I just sat with her.
Speaker 3: I don't know something really changed that year. We just
Speaker 3: talked about our lives and you know, kind of what
Speaker 3: was important in life and what wasn't and not having
Speaker 3: any regrets, and it healed in a way that I
Speaker 3: had never thought was possible. So the colonel died a
Speaker 3: few days before Christmas, and when people came to drop
Speaker 3: off food and say, you know, send their condolence, says
Speaker 3: my Mom's response was, this is my daughter, Kelly.
Speaker 4: She's also a widow. She lost her spouse as well.
Speaker 5: What's a moment that happened that you would have never
Speaker 5: expected to.
Speaker 3: Have had she came. She came to watch me perform
Speaker 3: at the Stonewall Inn in June.
Speaker 2: The story of Kelly's mom at the historic Stonewall Inn
Speaker 2: in a moment.
Speaker 4: All right, so my mom.
Speaker 3: Nine years I've been performing, she has never seen me perform.
Speaker 3: You know where my mom wanted to come see me
Speaker 3: perform in the middle of June on the thirtieth anniversary
Speaker 3: of Stonewall at the Stonewall Inn. The gayest thing ever, right,
Speaker 3: is the gayest thing I've ever done. Guess who I
Speaker 3: was opening for? Lenny Breedlove. Lenny Breedlove Dude performance artists,
Speaker 3: queer performance artist. Now you remember Lenny's last show where
Speaker 3: Lenny had a little stuffed animals like, Hi, I identify
Speaker 3: as an elephant, HI identify as a teddy bear?
Speaker 4: Right, very cute, very tame. I thought that that's the
Speaker 4: show that Lenny would be doing.
Speaker 3: No, oh, no, in the show my mom came to
Speaker 3: Lenny walked on the stage wearing nothing but a dick.
Speaker 3: And also, for no apparent reason that I could figure out,
Speaker 3: there was twenty minutes of Lenny peeing into.
Speaker 4: A bucket on stage.
Speaker 3: Now, if you've ever been upstairs at the Stone Wall,
Speaker 3: you know that the stage is maybe two or three
Speaker 3: feet from the front row where my mom was sitting.
Speaker 3: So I'm sitting in the audience thinking my mom and
Speaker 3: Lenny Breedlove are having a golden shower scene. And then
Speaker 3: I said the words I have not said before or since.
Speaker 3: I turned to her friend and I said, would you
Speaker 3: please get my mom some more wine? So we got
Speaker 3: through that incident more or less okay, But oh the
Speaker 3: questions the next day at breakfast, so she's like trying
Speaker 3: to figure things out. Right, So she's like, so there
Speaker 3: was a woman, a man, no, a woman no, A
Speaker 3: woman dressed like a man sitting on the lap of
Speaker 3: the woman. The man.
Speaker 4: No, the woman dressed like a man? Is that the
Speaker 4: way it always is?
Speaker 2: By this time, Kelly had met her partner, Cheryl, a
Speaker 2: writer and a poet. Cheryl was at the Stonewall performance too,
Speaker 2: and Kelly introduced her to her mom.
Speaker 3: She was like, she's beautiful and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I know, she's beautiful.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: She was like, Kelly, in your subculture? And I was like,
Speaker 3: I didn't even know she knew the word subculture. In
Speaker 3: your subculture, are you considered attractive? And I was like, yeah, mom,
Speaker 3: I'm actually in my subculture, I am considered attractive. There's
Speaker 3: like some women that want to date a mask on
Speaker 3: female and she was like, oh, I didn't have any idea,
Speaker 3: And that actually just made her so relieved, you know.
Speaker 3: And I think she started thinking me as more her
Speaker 3: son than her daughter, and I think that helped too.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was curious at that moment at Stonewall, at
Speaker 5: that performance, if like seeing your mom there and your
Speaker 5: friends there and your girlfriend there, like all hanging out
Speaker 5: having this time, does that sort of like I mean
Speaker 5: when I think back of like you as a teen
Speaker 5: having these questions about your purpose, you know that moment
Speaker 5: where you sort of done in your searching and did
Speaker 5: you have answers?
Speaker 3: I felt happy for sure. I mean I think, you know,
Speaker 3: I don't know if anyone's ever done and they're searching.
Speaker 3: You know, it was a moment that it felt like
Speaker 3: a lot of people worked really hard to get to
Speaker 3: that moment helped me get to that moment, you know,
Speaker 3: like my mom's gay hairdresser. You know, my mom had
Speaker 3: been watching Ellen for a long time, you know, Lenny
Speaker 3: even who like when they saw my mom just gave
Speaker 3: my mom a big hug, like they'd been waiting their
Speaker 3: whole lives to hug each other. You know, it seemed
Speaker 3: like there was some people who were interested in me
Speaker 3: and her being happy and me and her being friends,
Speaker 3: and that seemed really nice, you know. And also that
Speaker 3: she got to experience it, you know, she got to
Speaker 3: experience what it feels like to be to be loved
Speaker 3: by chosen family.
Speaker 2: And then, unbelievably, Cheryl was diagnosed with Hodgkins lymphoma.
Speaker 5: And how did your mom and Cheryl get along?
Speaker 3: My mom loves Cheryl. Yeah, yeah, Like when Cheryl started chemo,
Speaker 3: my mom bought her bunny slippers and like fussed over
Speaker 3: her and like my mom tried really hard to like
Speaker 3: give Cheryl some mom energy, and Cheryl really appreciated that,
Speaker 3: and I appreciated it. And my sister was like, weren't
Speaker 3: you jealous? And I was like no, In a way,
Speaker 3: that's like perfect because I get to observe that love
Speaker 3: towards somebody I love, and it's not complicated the way
Speaker 3: it would be between us, you know, So I actually
Speaker 3: really appreciate that.
Speaker 2: Kelly says that whenever there's a tragedy in her life,
Speaker 2: she does a show. When Cheryl died, she booked a
Speaker 2: whole Southern comedy tour.
Speaker 3: I don't know how people get through stuff without having
Speaker 3: an outlet of writing about it and performing about it
Speaker 3: and trying to make it funny. I don't really know. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it just seems like, wow, it seems brave. I love
Speaker 3: things being involved with somebody who has a serious illness,
Speaker 3: and I really feel like it gives you a perspective.
Speaker 3: It definitely challenges the assumptions that the universe is a
Speaker 3: good place, right, definitely challenges those assumptions, like, you know,
Speaker 3: like those bumper stickers and say God is good.
Speaker 4: All the time, I'm like, well, by the God is good?
Speaker 4: But I don't know about me all the time.
Speaker 3: Part right, because some kids get leukemia and some kids
Speaker 3: get a poony.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's okay, you can laugh at it. My therapist
Speaker 4: totally does.
Speaker 2: Kelly lives in Brooklyn in an apartment she affectionately calls
Speaker 2: Queer Study Hall. There's always a revolving door of friends
Speaker 2: coming through. She's a community school director, and she works
Speaker 2: part time as a nurse, and she's developing a new
Speaker 2: comedy tour fifty churches in fifty states. As for her faith,
Speaker 2: Kelly stopped going to church after her time in the
Speaker 2: Missionaries of Charity.
Speaker 3: Actually, if you look at the world, it does seem
Speaker 3: like there is a God, but it seems like God
Speaker 3: hates us, Right, That's what it really looks like. You know,
Speaker 3: the Haiti earthquake and then a color epidemic, you know.
Speaker 4: Like come on.
Speaker 2: But after a while she discovered it was actually harder
Speaker 2: not to be involved in a spiritual practice than it
Speaker 2: was to do it. Why fight it? So she found
Speaker 2: a church in New York, a very open church. In fact,
Speaker 2: she says, the pastor once said that even atheists are welcome, And.
Speaker 3: I was like, I think this is my church.
Speaker 4: The church.
Speaker 3: Really don't care what you believe in, but that almost
Speaker 3: in a sense doesn't matter. What matters is like the
Speaker 3: community and the connection and trying to find meaning. You know,
Speaker 3: the meaning is like for me, the meaning is the spirituality,
Speaker 3: like trying to find meaning in like whatever I experience,
Speaker 3: like try and convert whatever difficulty it is into something
Speaker 3: that can help other people. Did you talk about.
Speaker 5: Your mom's death with her? Did you talk about death
Speaker 5: with her?
Speaker 3: Oh? All the fucking time. That's like her favorite subject
Speaker 3: for the last five years.
Speaker 2: Kelly's mom died at the end of April after a
Speaker 2: year an assisted living and then hospice. She had a
Speaker 2: form of blood cancer. Kelly flew to Florida to be
Speaker 2: with her. Her mom didn't ask her to come because,
Speaker 2: as Kelly says, she's not a complainer, but Kelly went anyway.
Speaker 3: When we were kids, like I can remember her being like,
Speaker 3: don't put me on a machine, and we're like, Mom,
Speaker 3: we're just going through the McDonald's drive for right now,
Speaker 3: but okay, don't put on a machine. Got it? And
Speaker 3: she always said, I'm not afraid of dying. I'm afraid
Speaker 3: of I'm afraid of suffering, and I'm afraid of being alone.
Speaker 3: Every conversation for the last year, she said, they shoot horses,
Speaker 3: don't they. She really was like she's I think it
Speaker 3: made her really, you know, she had a very honest relationship,
Speaker 3: I think with God. But she always said, like, I
Speaker 3: just keep asking why am I still here.
Speaker 2: Kelly talked to the staff at Thesis said living facility,
Speaker 2: and they'd say things like I love your mom's laugh,
Speaker 2: and I just want to tell you this great thing
Speaker 2: your mom did for me. At one point, even the
Speaker 2: director of the facility was in tears talking about Kelly's mom.
Speaker 2: So Kelly had an answer to her mom's question.
Speaker 3: I came back and I was like, Mom, like, I
Speaker 3: can't tell you why you were here, but I can
Speaker 3: tell you, like why God gave you this extra year
Speaker 3: that has been so difficult. But I can tell you
Speaker 3: that you made people's lives. People at a assisted living
Speaker 3: facility in Florida, in the middle of a pandemic, the epicenter, right,
Speaker 3: you made their lives easier in some of the like
Speaker 3: the hardest times they will ever imagine. I was like,
Speaker 3: you changed, like you brought light in this like terrible
Speaker 3: difficult year, you know, And I was holding her hand
Speaker 3: when she died, so she got she got what she wanted,
Speaker 3: you know, so she wasn't and she wasn't suffering.
Speaker 5: So do you think that your time with the missionaries
Speaker 5: of charity, all this sitting in silence with others, helped
Speaker 5: you be there for your mom?
Speaker 3: I mean sure, you know, you spend years doing that,
Speaker 3: you develop that capacity, and you develop also that is
Speaker 3: not an uncomfortable thing, like we could be quiet, you know,
Speaker 3: even like one of the hospice doctors was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: usually when you come into a room, people are just
Speaker 3: like and there's an unconscious patient, people are just chattering
Speaker 3: at them or talking around them, you know, even though
Speaker 3: we know that hearing is the last to go. And
Speaker 3: I was like, well, I don't there's not some secret
Speaker 3: I need to tell my mom now, Like we've known
Speaker 3: she was going to die for a long time and
Speaker 3: and she uh, like we've said what we needed to say,
Speaker 3: Like what else am I going to say now?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 3: But I think like the comfort with silence is I
Speaker 3: guess the two things are like, you know, being a
Speaker 3: nun and also stand up comedy, because definitely stand up comedy,
Speaker 3: you know, you have to when you have to wait
Speaker 3: for the laugh. That silence feels like a really long time,
Speaker 3: but if you can hold the silence, you'll get a
Speaker 3: bigger laugh. So I haven't thought about that, And so
Speaker 3: now people ask me where I am theologically, And I
Speaker 3: don't really worry so much about the afterlife, except for
Speaker 3: maybe that it just sounds exhausting like another life after
Speaker 3: this one. I only want that if I can sit
Speaker 3: on a couch and watch HBO documentaries. Otherwise I'm out.
Speaker 3: But uh, you know, there was an attraction of like,
Speaker 3: you know, baby butcher nuns and priests and drag and
Speaker 3: groovy smelling incense. But also there was like the wonder
Speaker 3: of like thinking you knew all the answers then that
Speaker 3: if everyone thought like you, the world would just be fine.
Speaker 3: There was a lot of power in that. And sometimes
Speaker 3: even now, I'll uh, I'll hear like hymn being sung
Speaker 3: and Catholic church as I walk by, and I'll get
Speaker 3: kind of nostalgic, and I was like, oh, well, and
Speaker 3: then remember, you know, I was married to that guy
Speaker 3: and he was a little bit of a jerk. I'm
Speaker 3: Kelly Dunham, thank you.
Speaker 2: This episode was written and produced by Emily Foreman. Our
Speaker 2: editor is Rob Rosenthal Andrea Asoahe is our digital producer.
Speaker 2: Special thanks to Amy Gaines, Sarah Olander, Bethan Macaluso, Travis Dunlap,
Speaker 2: and consulting producer Mary Johnson. Her memoir and Unquenchable Thirst
Speaker 2: provided inspiration for this series. Our executive producers are Jessica
Speaker 2: Alpert and John Parati at Rococo Punch and Katrina Norvel
Speaker 2: at iHeartRadio. For photos and more details on this series,
Speaker 2: follow us on Instagram at Rococo Punch. You can reach
Speaker 2: out via email to the Turning at Rococoa Punch dot
Speaker 2: com I America Lance. Thanks for listening