Who runs the world? It’s Joey Mead’s turn

Can I interview you, Jo Jo?” I asked Joey Mead after having a moment conversing with Angie Mead King and hearing her thoughts on coming out and the journey that took her to her current state of evolution.

Exactly last week, Ian Angelo King came out as Angelina Mead King. Her wife Joey Mead King has decided to keep a low profile, shunning all interviews and calls from media about the matter. “I want to focus on us,” Joey has made it clear that despite the revelation that her partner has come out as a transwoman, they have both decided to remain faithful and loyal to each other.

How? That’s the biggest question for most women, and men — how she felt and how she pulled through it and how much unconditional love she has to stay in a relationship when certain things have been changed.

“It’s super inspiring from a woman’s perspective that she chose to stay with her spouse,” said an industry insider. “So many people quit their marriage for small things... It’s inspiring how their love won!”

Sticking with my wife

“I was okay with Ian as whatever he wants to be, I don’t look at her differently, I love everything,” says Joey, her eyes sparkling each time she speaks of her partner. I’ve known Joey for quite some time. I’ve seen her happy, ecstatic, in pain, in denial. I’ve seen her put up walls around her and I’m happy to see that now she has chosen to put a bridge where the walls once were and decided to simply be happy.

“I’m sticking it out with my wife,” Joey tells me with a face so sure, so accepting about her fate and how she has chosen this path. There was no look of  needing to be rescued or being in pain. I guess she has already dealt with her demons. The demons that she faced when she realized that the man she married wanted to be a woman. “I had to deal with the difficulty of my security as a woman.” But she’s over that.

We are not gonna go into the details of their journey towards that acceptance. That kind of sisterhood slash wife-and-wife bond that had developed between Joey Mead King and Angie Mead King — that’s been tackled in my article that came out earlier this week (“How Ian King became the Queen of Joey Mead”).

Fast forward to the acceptance and love that this couple had been embraced with in the wake of this issue enveloping our consciousness. Joey was overwhelmed by all the love and support that was being thrown her way. She didn’t expect it. “And why not? You get what you give. It’s universal law,” I told her. It just so happened that they’re not used to the attention because they’ve really been so private about their personal lives all throughout.

Positivity in social media

In this day and age of terrorist threats, scary leaders and the world going in different directions, it’s a breath of fresh air that people still choose to unite in love.  “It’s actually quite refreshing to see that people wake up happy because sometimes the news are so negative in the social media.”

Unconditional love is something that is always being preached, but we actually lack real role models that define and show us what it’s really like. It’s not without pain, it’s not without confusion, it’s not without adjustments,  it’s not without doubt. But you still do it anyway. Joey Mead did it anyway.

Nope, she’s not a modern-day martyr for her sacrifices weren’t all about suffering. Her strength lay in her suffering and in the end, she transformed the pain and whatever else she was feeling into acceptance and then love. How many of us can say the same?

After all that she has been through, Joey looks back at the tumultuous times and smiles, “It really just breaks away because at the end of the day, you go, and then what? What’s life without a little bit of bizarreness? That’s not fun, who wants to live like a normal ABC life?”

“What is normal these days? This is the new normal and everyone is taking it very well so it’s a perfect time for Ian to come out,” she told me before we set out to play a few rounds of “Cards Against Humanity.” “I just want to have like a normal...” She then realized what she had just said “Uhm...no no no — a new normal life with my wife and the animals.”

What more can you ask for?

* * *

(More thoughts on Instagram, Twitter and snapchat @officialtimyap.)