Pride, Mental Health, and Advocacy Featuring Juan Acosta

In this episode recognizing Pride Month, NAMI CEO Daniel H. Gillison, Jr. is joined by Juan Acosta, a mental health advocate and LGBTQI+ activist. During this conversation, the group explores Juan’s mental health journey, how he mixes mental health and LGBTQI+ advocacy, what change he hopes to see, and what’s next for him. They also discuss the California legislature recognizing Juan as a 2025 Pride Month honoree in 2025.

You can find additional episodes of this NAMI podcast and others at nami.org/podcast.

"Hope Starts With Us" is a podcast by NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. It is hosted by NAMI CEO Daniel H. Gillison, Jr.

Episode production is provided by NAMI staff, including Traci Coulter and Connor Larsen.

Transcript

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It's important that we remind ourselves that our community has been resilient throughout history, and we will continue to be resilient. Even though there's a gloomy and dark cloud up above us at this moment. We know that after the storm comes the rainbow, and we'll continue celebrating our pride with dignity and with our heads held high. Welcome to Hope Starts With Us, a podcast by NAMI. The National Alliance on Mental Illness. I'm your host, Dan Gillison, the CEO of NAMI. We started this podcast because we believe that hope starts with us. Hope starts with us talking about mental health. Hope starts with us making information accessible. Hope starts with us providing resources and practical advice. Hope starts with us sharing our stories, and hope starts with us breaking the stigma. If you or a loved one is struggling with a mental health condition and have been looking for hope, we made this podcast for you. Hope starts with all of us. Hope is a collective. We hope that each episode, with each conversation brings you into that collective so you know you are not alone. The theme is us celebrating and acknowledging Pride Month, where we will be discussing mental health and the LGBTQ+ community. Our guest is Juan Acosta. Juan is a mental health advocate, LGBTQ+ activist, speaker, and content creator recognized this month by the California State Legislature as a Pride Month honoree. A proclamation to recognize Pride Month in his hometown of Woodland, California, has passed after several attempts did fail. So congratulations to you, Juan. Thank you for joining us for this podcast. And I want to begin where we start with all of our guests. We begin the conversation by asking our guests to share their stories with our listeners. Could you and would you share your story about your mental health journey? What has that looked like? Of course. Thank you, Dan. Thank you for having me and thank you for having these conversations. For me, my mental health journey has been a difficult one, but a very healing one as well. I began struggling at the age of 13 due to many reasons. One of them, bullying I was facing. I was facing bullying because of what people assumed my sexuality to be. At a young age, I began getting called names and I was just made fun of. And even though they were right, I'm a proud gay man and I'm out now, it felt really intrusive at the time to be taunted for what people assumed my sexuality to be before I was ready to come out. In addition to that, I faced a lot of bullying because of language barriers. I come from a proud immigrant family and Spanish was my first language. So there was many things that I was facing. And I started my advocacy work out of a need for survival. I didn't want to be a mental health advocate. I didn't want to have to talk about these things, but I know I needed to talk about it in order to survive. And talking about it was a way I received support through school counselors, through community based organizations locally here in my hometown of Woodland. And that changed my life forever. I'm now much more aware of things that are healthy for my well-being, things that I love to tap into, people I can go to and talk to, and resources that are available. Juan, thank you, I appreciate that. And one of the things, we were talking about off camera was, you know, sometimes we think about the bullying and some of the, associated kinds of things that you navigate happen only at school. You had mentioned something profound to me where it followed you home. Talk a little bit about that. Because for our young people and for the parents, they may not--and the caregivers of young people, they may not understand what that looks like. And what that feels like and how it continues. When you said it followed you home, would you share for our listeners what you meant by that? Yeah. What I meant was that these things came with me home, right? The thoughts came with me home. But also, they were on my phone through social media. People still made comments. People were sending messages, whether it's through fake profiles, but things that were mean and that contributed to me struggling with my mental health. In addition to that, there was also comments that I heard from family members, not my immediate family, but cousins who made derogatory comments, at times, about the gay community and not knowing, at the time, that their cousin me was also gay. And so all of those things contributed to just me feeling unwell. And I didn't want to go to school. And then I felt physical symptoms. I always had stomachaches and I didn't understand why, but I knew that right when I got to school, there was different feelings coming up to me, and I just didn't want to be there. Yeah. Understood. Thank you for sharing that. That's really powerful from the standpoint of what that journey looks like in social media and stigma, family stigma and the stigma that comes from who you think are your friends and classmates as well. And as well as relatives. Juan, what does being a mental health advocate and part of the LGBTQ+ community mean to you? It means everything. It's been my purpose. I just mentioned that I started this out of a need for survival. Right? And it's become my life purpose. This is how I survive, and this is how I try to give back. All of the love, the mentorship that's been poured into me that has allowed me to become who I am today, I'm trying to give that back. I'm trying. My mission and purpose in life now is to ensure that young people have an opportunity to thrive, and not just survive. Specifically, young people from underserved communities who oftentimes don't look at the TV and see someone like them, who oftentimes aren't given the platforms like the one we have here today to talk about these things. I've always thought it's important to have people like us at the table or elsewhere on the menu. We need to be a part of these conversations, and we need to be involved in the change-making that is being done throughout the nation and throughout the world. Wow. That's powerful. Thank you for sharing that. I see that you're being recognized this month by the California Legislature as a Pride Month Honoree in part of the work you've done in your hometown and sharing your voice on platforms like the one that that we're on now and what you mentioned earlier. How did your hometown shape your journey around identity and mental health? And then I have a follow up, but let's go with that one right now. Yeah. Thank you. I mean, my hometown had everything to do with shaping who I am. I grew up in a small town. And when I was growing up and going through those circumstances of bullying and all of those things I mentioned, I didn't feel like there was anyone like me in the community. I didn't see public signs of support for the LGBTQ+ community. So growing up, I grew up with the mentality of, like, I need to get out of here. I want to go out and live somewhere where I feel seen, where I know that there's other people like me and I don't feel like a freak. And to me, it was moving to San Francisco, where I went to San Francisco State University because I knew it was somewhere with a lot of the LGBTQ+ affirmation and acceptance in the city. However, prior to moving to San Francisco, I wanted to make sure that everything I felt within me wasn't something that I took with me. Those negative feelings, I wanted to change it into something that was positive. I wanted to try and operate as a vehicle for change so that the younger people who were going to be growing up in this town after me didn't have to go through those things, that they did have a message of acceptance and affirmation, and which is why I drafted an LGBTQ+ Pride month proclamation in 2018 at the age of 21, prior to moving to San Francisco, to proclaim June as Pride Month for the first time in the town's history. And Dan, when I tell you that was the most powerful day of my life, not because I was able to contribute to history, in this town, but because there was people out there publicly, publicly sharing their stories for the first time. I was able to go and share my story as well, with a shaky voice at the time. And it was, you know, there was people speaking out against it as well, but there was nothing quite like seeing people rejoice and just hug each other after having it passed through the city council and now this upcoming weekend, actually, we're having our Pride Month festivities here in Woodland. And so it's a beautiful thing to see so that they they've been proclaiming Pride Month every year after the original 2018 proclamation. And now they have events dedicated to Pride Month every June. And think about you as a young 21 year old leading that effort to have your hometown actually sign the proclamation and declare, this as Pride Month. Way to go. That that is incredible. Your experience in matriculating or moving this proclamation forward, was a family involved in that? How did that come to be, and when was the family involved in your proclamation and your articulation of who you are? Yeah. So thank you, Dan, for that question. My family wasn't involved in the proclamation or the event itself at City Council on that day. My friends were in attendance and my high school counselor, Mary Scarlett. I'll say her name because I have so much appreciation for her. She was in attendance. She was someone I trusted in high school who believed in me, who supported me. And I know my parents believed in me at the time and supported me, but I was so scared of the rejection that I didn't want them to know. I had come out to my friends, to my school counselor, and I had publicly stated my story as a gay man at City Council that day without my parents knowing. I had not told them that I was a part of the LGBTQ+ community. I was so scared of their rejection, but I felt something greater than me, within me, that was to do that--to do that proclamation. And I had to speak about it in order for me to survive it. It was something that needed to come out of me and at that point I was ready for the worst outcome. I was ready for them to reject me, to kick me out. And that's what many members of our community face when they try and come out. So I remember coming home from City Council on that day, and I came home and I knocked on their room, and I went into the room, and I told them. It was time for me to tell them. You know, they were watching the news and I was on the TV as I came in, and it was with the pride flags. And, you know, they were just watching the TV. And I came in and I told them and I was so relieved. My mother was in tears, and, you know, she hugged me. She embraced me, and she gave me a kiss. My dad took, like, two minutes for him to, like, process. But he immediately gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek as well. And, they were, you know, embracing, affirming. Until this day, they are very proud of me and now are, you know, celebrating and just allowing me the opportunity to be myself with them without having to hide and having to run from who I am. They have embraced me and I am really grateful for that, because I know many people within the community to not have that and it's a privilege. And to those who don't have that family support system, know that there's, you know, chosen family. There's people out there that will wrap their arms around you when you need it most. Juan, this is this is incredible. So I'm visualizing that you are working on this proclamation. You had come out to your friends, to your school counselor, Mary. I'll say her name as well. Thank you, Mary. And what I want to say here is that while you were doing that work on this set of tracks, you knew eventually you'd have to tell your parents and the piece about, you knew that it was so important that you do this, that you had to go to City Council and do this. And you didn't have a fear of the City Council. You had a fear of telling your parents. And that's how so many in the LGBTQ+ community live. And let's now talk about, how did your hometown actually shape your journey around identity and mental health? And as it has influenced your work today and broadened your work because you've kind of expanded out of the hometown. So how did the hometown kind of give you that strength, give you that power, and actually help your voice amplify itself? Yeah. Something my hometown has and had at the time and still does to this day, is a community of diverse individuals who are open to listening and open to change. And at the time when I when I was younger, I grew up thinking like, I have to move to a big city to make an impact. I have to be in this place to make an impact. And moving to San Francisco was a beautiful experience for me. I was able to, you know, meet a lot of people and learn from a new environment. But eventually I came back to Woodland because I knew this was what felt like home. I knew that my community, people that understood who I was and who are one of my pillars in my life, were in Woodland, and there's nothing quite like having a community of people supporting you so that you can continue doing your work. Especially advocacy work is, as you know, can be very, troubling, exhausting at times. But they shape, to this day, who I am and how I approach my work, because for me, I always say I'm a lifelong learner. I'm never going to be a professional in that capacity of thinking, I know it all right. I'm always learning. That is the beauty of life, no matter how many awards or whatever it may be. I always want to be a lifelong learner, and I'm able to learn from here in Woodland and when I need to, I'm able to go out to wherever I'm needed and try to, you know, contribute to that change being made. You know what? That it is actually fantastic that you made the decision to leave the big city of San Francisco and go back to Woodland because you saw hope in Woodland. Not that you didn't see it in the big city, but you saw hope and need in Woodland, and you also had your network, another network. You had developed one in San Francisco, but you had another network that were close allies. And you said that this is where I can make a difference and I can make a difference from Woodland out, versus from San Francisco back. So, again, kudos to you, for seeing that and doing that. I really love what you said about advocacy. Yes, it can be, you know, it can be exhausting. It is very empowering. The best thing I can say is that it's all hands on deck. I mean, if you're advocating, you're advocating, there is no middle ground. Now, as you look at your advocacy, we know your voice is powerful. And clearly you have made incredible impact so far at NAMI, we know that advocacy is meaningful, but it can be tiring. And that other word is exhausting. How do you make space for joy and rest? Especially during a high engagement time like Pride Month? Yeah, for me, it's being surrounded by loved ones. I am, you know, devoted to my family. To my parents. I would not be anything without my parents. They are my heroes. And they have given up so much so that my siblings and I could have the opportunities that we have today and being around them brings me joy. It brings me, you know, that peace that oftentimes I seek when I feel overwhelmed. And so spending time with them, with my friends, is also really important. Just being able to laugh and have that radical joy that even though there's so much going on in the world at this moment, we have to make time to find, you know, that laughter, to find a moment to dance, to just be with one another so that then we can get ready again to go back and do the work that we know that needs to be done. So just spending time with them, making sure that I'm also getting movement and I'm exercising, listening to music is also really helpful for me. And I like to write. I write a lot of poetry. I don't usually share it. I don't know if it's good or bad, but helps me in my mental health, a lot. So, some people call that journaling. And what you, what you're looking at is, is I write poetry, I put words on paper, and it means something for me. It's a part of how I take care of myself. And then you mentioned family, and you also said music. And dancing. This is about joy. So for our listeners, you know, in those moments of uncertainty, the one thing that is certain is that you need to have joy and you need to fill your cup with joy, and you need to listen to Juan in terms of, you know, the things that he does. And then you've got to look in the mirror and say, what can I do? And what do I do to fill my cup with joy? Because the work is hard, the work is continuous, and you've got to be able to replenish. So I appreciate, Juan, you sharing this with our group. And also family. What Juan said about his mom and dad and his family, that's important. Not everybody has that. We recognize that. But if you do have it, access it and understand that it's about love. What's love got to do with it? It's got everything to do with it. For those in the community who we know do get rejected and no longer have what they thought they had in terms of that support and that love, what would you share with them? I would share that there is resources out there of people that can support them. There's support groups for the LGBTQ+ community and many organizations. But more than that, there are people from the LGBTQ+ community and beyond, you know, people just from different paths of life who will embrace you and that it doesn't matter how we may, you know, go through life, the rejection that we face, it may be every single day we face rejection in different areas of life. But we know that we are worthy of love. And you should connect with people who make you feel like you are loved. You should surround yourself with those people. Surround yourself with people who affirm who you are, who celebrate who you are, and who make you feel safe when you're around them. I think that's the most important part, is just finding those people that your heart feels at ease when you're around them, and that you're not trying to walk on eggshells or trying to live a double life. You know, when I was, you know, going back home and, you know, the code switching, the different things that I put myself through because I had this fear. It's a real thing and it's difficult to navigate. But there is people out there who will love you exactly as you are, because there's nothing wrong with being a part or a member of the LGBTQ+ community. I said this before a while back, but it's not us as people who are broken. It is society that is broken. It is people who maybe not, you know, may be as accepting or as understanding of who we are, but there's people out there, on the contrary, who are very accepting and understanding and who are there to uplift and empower us as we go through life. Juan, thank you for that. And I want to ask you another question. We just learned that, SAMHSA, the pilot that they started, in 2022, to have Option 3 for the 988 line, which was, designated for the LGBTQ+ community, is going to dissolve in July. Any thoughts about that from the standpoint. What 988, do you feel, has meant to the community? And what do you think this change will mean? You know, Dan, it's unfortunate news. I strongly believe LGBTQ+ youth need resources that are specialized to them. What we know is that the LGBTQ+ community goes through things that other communities may not quite understand, and having those specialized resources can really support young people. And feeling seen and represented, right? Being a part of the LGBTQ+ community is a unique experience. And so it's sad. It will impact the LGBTQ+ community. And I just hope that there are opportunities so that we are able to bridge that need and that gap now, that will be in those resources, and more importantly is for me to remind people that the LGBTQ+ community, when we talk about pride, it's about coming together and times that we feel like there's not many of us. Right? And this Pride Month, specifically, at a time where many LGBTQ+ individuals are scared, where trans people in particular are scared and many feel like they're being targeted, it's important that we do what we can to provide that support. No matter what community you're from, it's important that we come together and support one another, and it's important that we remind ourselves, members of the LGBTQ+ community, that our community has been resilient throughout history, and we will continue to be resilient as long as we stay together and united towards opportunities for our community and towards a future where we are no longer scared to be ourselves. And oftentimes, you know, leaders sometimes make it more difficult for young people, especially LGBTQ+ young people, to exist. But know that we have one another, especially during these times, and know that together we'll bring a brighter tomorrow. Even though there's a gloomy and dark cloud up above us at this moment, we know that after the storm comes a rainbow and we'll continue celebrating our pride with dignity and with our heads held high today and always. Juan, that is incredible. So, we heard what keeps you grounded and what keeps you motivated. Your family. And as we wrap up, I have one last question for you. And it's a question we ask every one of our guests, just like at the top of the show, at the end of the podcast. And that is, the world can be a difficult place, and sometimes it can be hard hold on to hope. That's why with each episode, we dedicate the last couple of minutes of our podcast to a special segment called Hold On to Hope. What helps you, Juan, hold on to hope? Yeah, what helps me hold on to hope is my loved ones. They are my hope. In addition to knowing that there's so much more that we need to do and that we can do, not a matter of fear, but rather knowing that we can do so much more for ourselves, for the ones that we love and for the future. Knowing that young people, our communities, whatever community we come from, that they need us, and knowing that there's people like Dan, like other individuals doing work to support change that can help people live a life that they will thrive in and not just survive in. You know what? This is? This is fantastic. And I want to really thank you for sharing your voice and your time and your advocacy with the community and with everyone. And I also want to extend thanks to your family for wrapping their arms around you and being part of your infrastructure and your support. That is a great, great model. So with that said, we want to wrap up, and I want to say this. This has been Hope Starts With Ws, a podcast by NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. If you are looking for mental health resources, you are not alone. To connect with the NAMI HelpLine and find local resources, visit NAMI.org/help. Text "helpline" to 62640 or dial 800-950-NAMI(6264). Or if you are experiencing an immediate suicide, substance use, or mental health crisis, please call or text 988 to speak with a trained support specialist or visit 988lifeline.org. I'm Dan Gillison, your host. Thanks for joining us and be well.