Parents, This Is What Your Queer Teen Wants This Holiday Season

Feeling the pressure to find the perfect gift for your LGBTQ+ teen?

In this soft, grounding episode, Heather shares what really matters to LGBTQ+ kids this time of year and how your presence and thoughtfulness can be more powerful than anything wrapped in a bow.

• Discover 5 human-centered gifts that build connection and joy
• Learn how to create belonging through slow rituals and shared presence
• Get practical tips for meaningful, low-stress gift-giving even on a budget
• Unlearn the myth that more gifts = more love

Tune in now and walk away with a heart-centered plan to gift with meaning, not pressure. Your presence is already enough.

Key Takeaways

• Presence is the gift. The most meaningful thing you can give your LGBTQ+ teen is the feeling of being seen and safe.
• Intentional gifts build trust. Gifts that reflect identity, interests, or emotional needs foster connection not just excitement.
• Rituals matter. The 13 Sacred Nights tradition offers a grounding space for reflection, bonding, and family storytelling.
• You don’t have to spend a lot. A mug, a journal, a game, a handwritten note, or a shared recipe can say: I love who you are becoming.
• Performative gifting doesn’t equal love. True generosity is rooted in connection, not cost.

Links mentioned in the episode:

Human Being Journal

Overthinker Journal

WTF Notebooks

Etsy for mugs, recipe cards, and an apron

Games - Hitster and Who's Most Likely to...are two faves (instructions for Fishbowl are below)

13 Sacred Nights Oracle Deck and 13 Sacred Nights Ritual

Half Baked Harvest

Hi, I’m Heather Hester, and I’m so glad you’re here!

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At the heart of my work is a deep commitment to compassion, authenticity, and transformative allyship, especially for those navigating the complexities of parenting LGBTQ+ kids. Through this podcast, speaking, my writing, and the spaces I create, I help people unlearn bias, embrace their full humanity, and foster courageous, compassionate connection.

If you’re in the thick of parenting, allyship, or pioneering a way to lead with love and kindness, I’m here with true, messy, and heart-warming stories, real tools, and grounding support to help you move from fear to fierce, informed action.

Whether you’re listening in, working with me directly, or quietly taking it all in—I see you. And I’m so glad you’re part of this journey.

More Human. More Kind. formerly Just Breathe: Parenting Your LGBTQ Teen is a safe and supportive podcast and space where a mom and mental health advocate offers guidance on parenting with empathy, inclusion, and open-minded allyship, fostering growth, healing, and empowerment within the LGBTQ community—including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer individuals—while addressing grief, boundaries, education, diversity, human rights, gender identity, sexual orientation, social justice, and the power of human kindness through a lens of ally support and community engagement.

Fishbowl Explainer:

Here’s how it works:

First, divide into two teams. Give everyone the same number of paper strips — six per person is a great starting point. Take a couple of minutes to write down words or phrases on your strips. Fold them up and drop them into one big bowl. Anything goes, as long as it’s something you can describe or act out. And trust me when I tell you, anything has been the key word in my house, with them often being hilarious, irreverent, obscure, and at times wildly inappropriate! One of the key ingredients that makes this game so much fun is letting everyone be unabashedly themselves! 

Fishbowl has three rounds, and every round keeps going — teams trading turns back and forth — until all the clues in the bowl have been guessed. Each turn is one minute, and you switch clue-givers every time, which keeps it fun and unpredictable.

Round One is the warm-up. The clue-giver can use as many words as they want to describe the phrase. Think Taboo without the pressure.

Round Two gets a little trickier. The same clues go back into the bowl, but this time the clue-giver can only use one word. Just one. It’s always hilarious to see which word people choose.

And Round Three is pure charades — no words at all, just acting, flailing, and a lot of hysterical laughter.

The goal? As a team, guess as many clues as you can each round, and most importantly, enjoy the silliness and connection that happen along the way. Pro tip: playing this game is also a super fun way to bring a significant other into your family’s mix!