About Rainbow Roots

I Keep Queer Kids Safe by Helping Parents Grow.

Hi, I’m Kathleen Lancaster. I’m a straight Gen X mom, a widow, and the mother of two LGBTQ kids who are now young adults. I spent more than a decade in Catholic schools, grew up in the kind of generation where our parents were literally reminded by people on television to make sure we were in the house at 10:00pm, and then somehow arrived in adulthood expected to know how to raise children whose lives came with language, visibility, technology, risks, and possibilities most of us were never taught to understand. Some of the tools we were handed were barely sufficient for us. Now we’re trying to use them on kids growing up forty years later. At some point, the adults have to update the software.

I did not set out to become an LGBTQ advocate, and I am not here to position myself as an authority on what it feels like to be queer. I’m straight. Queer people can speak for themselves. My lane is parenting: what happens when you love your kid with your whole heart and still discover that love, by itself, does not automatically make you informed, safe, accessible, or prepared. I have gotten things right with my kids. I have also gotten things wrong, apologized, changed course, learned better language, challenged things I once took for granted, and let my kids show me who they actually were instead of insisting they become the people I had pictured in my head.

Rainbow Roots didn’t begin because I was standing alone in a room thinking, My kid is queer. What the hell do I do now? Because I absolutely knew what I wanted to do: love my kids, protect them, listen when they told me something mattered, and keep learning when my first instinct turned out to be incomplete. The question that eventually became Rainbow Roots was bigger and, frankly, a lot more infuriating: What if I could keep queer kids from being displaced to begin with?

That question grew out of my own family and my relationship with Brave Trails, an organization that gave one of my kids exactly the kind of affirming community they needed at a moment when it mattered enormously. Picking them up from camp one year changed something in me. I knew my kid was coming home with me, but I also knew there were kids there who might not have the same safety waiting for them. I started thinking about what happens after a young queer person loses home, family support, financial stability, or all three. Eventually, I dreamed up a brick-and-mortar workforce project where displaced queer kids and foster youth could earn real money, learn transferable skills, and build some independence. That project is still very much alive. But somewhere along the way, another question showed up and refused to leave me alone: Why are we waiting until the kid is already outside? And why the fuck are the kids always the ones being asked to adjust?

Their family cannot handle them? Adjust. Their church makes them feel ashamed? Adjust. Their sports environment was built around somebody else? Adjust. Their sensory needs inconvenience Thanksgiving? Adjust. Grandpa cannot survive a pronoun? Apparently the kid should adjust. We spend an incredible amount of energy teaching children how to survive environments adults built badly, and then we congratulate ourselves when they become “resilient.”

I started wondering what would happen if we turned that question around: What do the adults need to change? That is Rainbow Roots.

The Adults Do the Work Here

Children should not have to explain their humanity well enough to earn decent treatment from adults. A queer kid should not have to become the household LGBTQ encyclopedia. A neurodivergent kid should not have to melt down spectacularly enough before someone believes the environment is overwhelming. A disabled child should not have to demonstrate gratitude for access. A teenager should not have to become their parent’s therapist, theologian, political analyst, or emotional support animal because Mom and Dad are having a crisis over something the kid already knows about themselves.

Parents are allowed to struggle. We are allowed to be confused, scared, embarrassed, religious, politically conflicted, behind on the language, or horrified by the realization that we handled something badly. We are even allowed to need some damn time. What we are not entitled to do is make the child absorb the cost of that process.

That is what I mean when I say children are not meant to carry the moral anxiety of adults.

Sometimes parental growth is surprisingly ordinary. You learn a term. You stop making a joke. You ask instead of assuming. You buy the food your kid can reliably eat instead of turning dinner into a character-development exercise. You stop making the gender-nonconforming child dress differently for the family photo because Grandma might have feelings about it. You let the teenager leave the loud holiday gathering instead of demanding that they “be polite” until their nervous system catches fire.

Sometimes growth costs more. You challenge your pastor. You tell your mother-in-law she cannot speak to your child that way. You stop laughing along with an old friend because suddenly the joke has your kid’s face on it. You leave Thanksgiving. You rethink a tradition. You set a boundary. You lose somebody’s approval. And eventually, every parent doing this work runs into the harder question: How uncomfortable are you willing to get in order to create the safety your child needs? Because support is easy when it costs you nothing.

I’m not interested in turning parents into flawless allies who have memorized the correct vocabulary and never fuck up. I am interested in helping adults notice what their child is being asked to carry while everyone else figures their shit out. Then we ask the question that runs underneath almost everything here: Now that I know, what changes?

Awkward Allies, Come On In!

I use the phrase Awkward Ally affectionately because I think perfection has scared a lot of decent people into silence. Some parents are so afraid of saying the wrong thing that they say nothing. Others wait until they have read seventeen books and can pronounce every acronym before they risk asking their kid a sincere question. Meanwhile, the kid is standing there thinking, Could you maybe just be my parent?

Awkward allyship means you show up before you are polished. You listen when the answer makes you defensive. You apologize without turning the apology into a hostage negotiation. You learn something new without requiring your kid to congratulate you for it. You understand that being corrected is not the same thing as being condemned. You fall forward, get back up, and behave differently next time.

There is room here for religious parents. Conservative parents. Parents who voted in ways they are now reconsidering. Parents whose families are complicated as hell. Parents who came from cultures where nobody talked about any of this. Parents who did not understand ten years ago and are finally ready to understand now. Parents of adult queer children who suddenly realize that being 36 does not mean their kid stopped carrying something that happened at 16.

If you are sincerely trying to learn, you are welcome here. There is, however, a boundary.

Rainbow Roots does not host debates about whether LGBTQ people deserve dignity, safety, or a place in the world. We are not going to spend three hours pretending that dehumanization becomes intellectually respectable if somebody phrases it as a question. I will discuss evidence. I will discuss parenting. I will discuss fear, faith, culture, boundaries, repair, mistakes, and the enormous messiness of loving actual humans. You do not get to drag me into your sewer and call it a debate.

Questions are welcome. Curiosity is encouraged. Judgment is left at the door.

What We Actually Talk About

Rainbow Roots lives where family life collides with the rest of the world, because parenting does not happen in some sealed little suburban laboratory. Our kids go to schools and churches. They play sports. They use the internet. They have bodies and nervous systems and friendships and crushes and disabilities and sensory needs and identities and private lives. They attend Pride. They watch television. They hear what politicians say about people like them. They notice what Grandma says when a trans person appears on the news. They notice which jokes Dad laughs at. They absolutely notice when you defend everybody in the room except them.

So we talk about queer identity, neurodivergence, disability, accessibility, family culture, faith, sports, schools, Pride, chosen family, boundaries, grief, internet safety, trust, repair, pop culture, and what happens when keeping the peace starts requiring your kid to disappear a little.

Sometimes I will give you a practical script for handling a relative. Sometimes I’ll talk about why safe foods matter at Christmas. Sometimes we will discuss Harry Potter, Hunger Games, cheerleading, gay bars, or why Kurt Loder was apparently my trusted adult. Sometimes I’ll tell you a story about my own family. Sometimes I will ask a question that is going to irritate you for three days.

That is intentional.

Families are absurd, and parenting is humbling in ways nobody really warns you about. I do not believe serious work has to sound solemn all the time. Sometimes the shortest route into a hard truth runs straight through a joke. (For example, after my husband died, I Googled, “SNL version of books about grief and loss,” which led me to Nora McInerny.)

I also don’t believe every other organization doing LGBTQ family work needs to get out of my way. Quite the opposite, actually. PFLAG exists. The Family Acceptance Project exists. Mama Dragons exists. Brave Trails exists. Heather Hester and other parent educators are doing adjacent work. Good. There should be more. Have you looked around lately? The scale of the need is far too large for one organization, one expert, one mom, or one method.

Which brings us back to me. Same garage. Different tools.

Rainbow Roots comes at the problem through adult responsibility. I keep asking what parents, families, communities, and systems can change so the kid stops paying for everyone else’s learning curve. I am not trying to own the garage. I’d just like a lot more fucking tools in it.

Accessibility is Part of the Work

Rainbow Roots talks a lot about changing environments instead of teaching children to become better at enduring barriers adults could remove. That principle applies here, too. It would be fairly ridiculous to say access is belonging and then build content that leaves people out.

Every Rainbow Roots video is captioned and accompanied by a written transcript. We avoid blinking and flashing effects, and we design our graphics and written content with readability in mind. Whenever possible, we offer more than one way to take in an idea, because people have different bodies, brains, senses, processing styles, and access needs. No single format works for everyone.

Accessibility is not something we tack on after the “real” work is finished. It is part of the real work. We will not always anticipate every barrier, which is why we will keep listening, learning, and improving. If we are asking families, communities, and systems to notice what makes participation harder and then do something about it, Rainbow Roots has to be willing to do the same.

About Me, Since You’re Probably Wondering

I’m Kathleen Lancaster, founder of Rainbow Roots Media. My family has lived through grief, political disagreement, faith, addiction and recovery, neurodivergence, disability, queer identity, chosen family, broken relationships, repaired relationships, and parenting decisions I would absolutely make differently if somebody handed me a time machine.

I have no interest in pretending that lived experience magically turns me into an expert on everybody else’s family. It does give me something useful, though: I know what it is like to love your kids deeply and still have to examine yourself. I know what it is like to discover that a survival skill you carried out of your own childhood can’t necessarily be called a parenting skill. I know what it means to watch a husband change his worldview because the people he loved made abstract politics impossible to keep abstract. I know what it feels like to lose people, draw boundaries, build chosen family, and realize that sometimes protecting the household you have means letting go of the version of family you thought you were supposed to preserve.

I also know that my children’s stories belong to them. Being my kid does not make someone public property. I will tell you what I did, what I saw, what I learned, what I regret, and what changed me. I will not narrate somebody else’s inner life because it makes better content.

And I am not here because I think parents need another person wagging a finger at them. Most parents I meet love their kids enormously. Love is not usually the missing ingredient. Sometimes the missing ingredient is information. Sometimes it is courage. Sometimes it is humility. Sometimes it is a boundary. Sometimes it is the willingness to say, “I don’t understand this yet, and I refuse to let fear make the decision for me before I learn what it actually is.” That’s growth. And growth is the assignment here.

If You Are Here

You do not need to arrive fluent. You don’t need to have your theology resolved, your extended family trained, your vocabulary perfected, and your entire emotional history processed before you can protect your kid. But, you do need to be willing to look honestly at what your child is carrying. You need to be willing to hear something you didn’t expect. You need to be willing to repair something when you get it wrong. And when love, tradition, comfort, approval, and safety stop pointing in the same direction, eventually you may have to decide which one gets your loyalty.

I hope you choose the kid. Every damn time.

Welcome to Rainbow Roots.