Vivian (she/her) is a Nigerian writer, singer, web designer, and queer activist working as a paralegal and first responder for STAG Initiative, a trans-focused NGO. Raised Catholic in an orphanage, she found her way to queer community through literature, social media, and underground gatherings, all while navigating a country where being LGBTQ+ is criminalized.

In this episode, Vivian pulls back the curtain on what queer life in Nigeria actually looks like: the secret pride parties, the catfishing dangers, the NGOs fighting to protect their community, and the surprising ways wealth and class shape who faces consequences under the law. She also talks about the funding crisis hitting Nigerian queer organizations, the unique challenges facing trans people, and why she still calls Nigeria home.

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Tanya Johnson (she/her), licensed mental health counselor, clinical supervisor, and counseling professor, for a deep dive into the psychology of religious trauma and high-control groups.

Dr. Johnson breaks down exactly how high-control religions use behavioral, emotional, thought, and information control to keep members compliant and disconnected from their own instincts.

In this episode we cover:

• Why religious trauma is so hard to recognize and why we minimize it
• The BITE model and how cults control every aspect of your inner world
• How high-control groups train you to interpret your emotions through their lens
• Why anger is repressed in religious spaces and what that costs you
• The connection between the fawn response and religious conditioning
• Why neurodivergent people can have a unique relationship with high-control groups
• How to talk to loved ones who are still inside a high-control religion
• Why leaving religion can feel like losing your identity and map for reality
• Reclaiming your inner authority and learning to trust yourself again
• The martyrdom complex and how it follows you out of the church
• Why doing it scared is the only way through conditioned guilt and fear

Dr. Johnson also shares resources for finding religious trauma informed therapists and her own courses for both clients and therapists in training.

Dr. Lulu (Coach Udaku) is a queer Nigerian immigrant pediatrician, certified life coach, bestselling author, and advocate whose life defies every box society tries to put her in.

In this conversation, she opens up about her own decades-long journey to understanding her identity and how navigating faith, culture, immigration, and medicine shaped every step of the way.

Dr. Lulu shares the raw, unfiltered experience of learning her eldest child is transgender and how that moment cracked her world open and ultimately became her life's calling. She breaks down the critical difference between accepting and affirming a queer child, why siblings are the forgotten members of a transitioning family, and what parents absolutely must do before their child ever comes out to them.

We also dive into the concept of "inviting in", a powerful reframe that puts the power back in queer people's hands, and her trademarked theory of reverse intersectionality, which transforms marginalized identities into tools for meaningful change.

Check Out: https://drluluspridecorner.com/