Preparing Your Child To Meet Difference With Empathy - Sean Szeps On Identity, Finding Acceptance, Otherness, & More

Dec 22, 2025

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In this deeply moving and powerfully honest episode of Tea with Jules, Jules sits down with writer, speaker, content creator, podcast host, and fierce LGBTQIA+ advocate Sean Szeps.

What begins as a conversation about parenting quickly expands into something much bigger: identity, belonging, empathy, religion, raising kind humans, finding love, rewriting the script of your life, and the courage it takes to live as your truest self.

Sean shares his extraordinary journey - from growing up in a deeply religious community in the U.S., to navigating his sexuality alone as a child, to eventually coming out and finding acceptance, love, marriage, and fatherhood. He opens up about internalised shame, choosing between two impossible futures, the moment the world shifted and parenthood became a real possibility, and the emotional rollercoaster of raising twins through surrogacy.

Jules and Sean dive into otherness - the feeling of being different and how every one of us, regardless of sexuality, gender, or background, has experienced moments of being the “only one in the room.” Together they explore how parents can prepare children to meet difference with empathy, curiosity, and compassion.

This episode is emotional, uplifting, raw, hilarious, and full of wisdom, the kind that deepens your understanding of yourself and the world around you.

Tea-mates buckle up. We go there.

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Credits:
Sound Engineer & Music: @kailesh_reitmans
Videographer & Editor: @nathan_niguidula
Producer: @lisajohnston_ @julessebastian

Welcome to Tea with Jules hosted by Jules Sebastian. Here we spill the tea and learn life lessons from honest conversations with experts, celebrities and friends.