Transforming Regret

I was going through some boxes the other day trying to find something and came across many old pictures of me with the big Farrah Faucet hair. I look at those now like all of that was so far away and yet it really wasn't. I was playing a part to make others more comfortable for much of my life. These photographs have become harder for me to look at the further into being authentic I am. I learned a great deal from the experience of experiencing life from both sides of the binary gender world and I would not trade those lessons for anything. Because of that unique training I see things that most men don't see or understand about a woman's experience walking in this world.  I also understand things about men and the way men are treated that most women don't.


Part of the pain in looking back is thinking about why I allowed the worry of loss to keep me from being true to myself.  Not knowing for sure what would happen, but I knew that there would be some loss.  Family, friends, career which of these would have walked this break in the gender norm with me?  I allowed that fear to keep me from transitioning much earlier in life and there are times I look at that with some regret. I do work to turn that regret into good energy. I use that energy to help me as an activist working to create a safer more friendly place for others to feel supported in being who they truly are. When I was growing up in the south there was no support for a kid or young person who was LGBTQ. I am thankful to have the opportunity to be apart of creating change in this area. 


The next reason it is difficult to look at those pictures is that I see the inner pain, the loneliness, the celebrated young person who felt so misunderstood. This is the reason that suicide is so prevalent with LGBTQ youth and young adults. I could not see any light at the end of the tunnel. I did not see a way out of this charade I was playing. There was no internet to find community, no support group and I grew up hearing everything about what I was feeling was SIN. All of that combined becomes paralyzing. I am not sure how I was able to accomplish all that I did through that, all that I know is that I saw it as some kind of a way out.


I get asked all the time by caring people who want to help "what can I do to make a difference?" I believe that the most important thing that any of us can do is to give people a safe space to be their authentic self, whatever that is for them. To give people a safe place to explore that without judgments. Tell young people that being fully YOU is more important then fitting into the status quo.  To follow their hearts and that they are supported in that. If all we did was this, for just one young person, we could make an monumental difference. 

Way to Sticky - Labels

The way we communicate in society calls for us to label everything. When working with a child to learn language we help them label everything they touch, see and feel to learn how to communicate.  We spend a good part of our early years being taught to label everything in our world to identify it and even to put those things in categories according to those labels. Apple, this is a fruit and goes in the fruit group, category and so on. We also do this with people during our formative foundation learning process. This is mommy, daddy, grandma, teacher, and so on.  When our education system in mostly based on labeling and categorizing it makes it difficult to open our minds beyond this form of thinking and cataloging that we are so well trained in. When I teach about diversity I let people know that I have so much compassion for people struggling with all of this because we have all been brainwashed, conditioned by our education systems, families, churches and on and on. This is apart of that conditioning. We teach labeling and categorizing and then tell people 'don't put me in a box," and not to label people. That can makes people brain do flips. Labeling for the purpose of communicating is sometimes needed so what makes it turn negative.

Labeling gone bad happens when we attach things to those labels and then make judgements about who a person is or what they can and cannot do according to those attachments. This is the start of when and how we limit people according to labels.  Like "girls are not supposed to play football."
I had not idea you played football with your penis, but I have heard statements like this limiting someone due to things like genitalia my entire life. Another common one is something like, "wow, its amazing how well you dance and move for such a big guy."  Those are total judgement based statements about what a person has attached to a category and label they have given you. This is something we have to commonly examine within ourselves. WE ALL DO IT.  We were trained to do it. Forgive yourself, be aware of it and start paying attention when you do it and then examine how you are labeling and categorizing. Are you doing it in a way that puts limits on the person, thing, event or can you give those labels and still be consciously open to many possibilities.

 As a transman which is a label, that I many times detest but use as an activist and educator to help talk about gender. I usually don't like to meet someone when someone else has told them that I am trans. The reason is they already have these preconceived notions in their minds of what that means and I have found it is usually not positive. I would rather them meet me as a person then find out if need be and then I always love the shocking, "WOW, I had no idea."  "You are a nice guy."  I love when they act shocked that a trans person can be a nice person, or a regular seeming guy.  I find that label very limiting in others perceptions, in what people have attached to it.

Conscious living is what I hope for in the world. I hope that through educating that people open their minds to examine what they attach to all labels.This work of living consciously is a lifetime journey and I believe the only way to live. Remember the way we were trained it takes work to retrain and remap our brains. Be patient with yourself as you do this work and even listen to the labels you use on yourself in your head when you are beating yourself up.  Examine those as well. When I facilitate diversity training's I do several exercises around labeling to cultivate deep examination of how we attach things to these labels we use. Here is one for you.  Write down every label you use to describe yourself and you have heard others use to describe you. Then write what each of those labels means to you. What thoughts come up around those labels and what feelings rise up within around those thoughts. How do they limit you and the full expression of who you are?  Try this exercise and let me know what it reveals to you.

PS:  When you are ready to shed a label - this stuff called "Goo be Gone" is great to get the sticky off.

Beyond 50 Shades Of Gray - Spanking, Safe Words, and Boundaries

Recovering From the Lie

I was on an LGBTQ panel a couple weeks ago and a friend who is a transgender woman said something that really stuck out to me. She said that when you are over forty and trans, basically society taught us to lie. We had to lie to be safe, we had to cover up who we were to survive. When a person spends their first forty years having to lie and hide who they really are, how does that effect every part of that persons life.


Wow, it is true that many people have had to cover up parts of who they are to be safe. What kind of lasting effect does that have on people?  What effects does that have on our relationships?  As I contemplate these questions, something inside me knows that this has had a deep effect on many aspects of my life and the lives of all who have lived that experience. The idea of don't ask, don't tell is even asking people to lie, to cover up. When we work and live in a world where others can have pictures of who they love in the work place and gay people could not, or have to play a game or a part that is not true to who we are each day by how we present in order to be safe and have or keep a job. Many people have had to hide who they are to be accepted. When anyone has to do this for years how can living a life of lies like this not change a person? Having to live like that is existing under a constant state of hyper-pressure. Living in fear of being found out and what the consequences of that would be. These are real fears as many have lost jobs, been kicked out of families, churches, circle of friends or worse.


I think of relationships that I had with good people who would say things to me like " you don't talk to me enough about the real stuff." How can you when as a trans person, different from many of my gay friends, I did not think I could even share with partners what I was dealing with inside. How do you share or expect a partner or even close friends in the south in the 80's to understand this? There was no support group where I was and the internet was not there yet to find community.  We were very isolated at that time and before.  This experience has stayed with me in many ways, like with trusting people or always wondering if people really understand you or accept you fully. Those parts of me that were trained for so many years to carefully navigate the world take a time to work through if one ever totally does, it is certainly a form of PTSD. 


 Then when I finally got out of the south and felt I was in a safe enough space to share there were close friends from the south who said things to me like, "why didn't you feel like you could tell me."  It is hard not to laugh when people say such things. No matter how nice you were to me, you were nice as I presented, fitting into certain boxes that you were comfortable with. If I no longer fit into those boxes how was I to have any idea you would still accept me. How was I, or anyone like me, to know who to trust? Then coming out about being transgender and being very public about it, I have seen that people respond in many different ways. Some have come through and been able to talk with me and accept it and some have not, which is alright. I have to give others the same room to walk whatever their journey is, as I have asked for the safe space to walk mine. 


It is a good thing that many young people today don't understand this because we have been riding the wave of positive change in many ways. Much of the world is much more accepting than when I was a young person and I am glad for that. It is still important to understand that many of us did not grow up with that freedom and it has had lasting effects on us and our community. No one should have to live a life of lies to be safe or be able to have a job, love who they want to and progress in the world. If each of us let the people in our lives know that we want all to have the safe space and freedom to live authentically we can change this.

Dance of the Souls - Creating the love you want

My soul is dancing - I have had this crazy idea my entire life that I could have a love that is committed, stable, supportive, a SAFE space to come home to and to grow in together, set and work on goals together, real open communication, be able to be true to self, and have respect and yet have adventure, abandon, spontaneity, wild passion, freedom, playfulness, and the freedom of exploration.  Most people seem to feel you get one or the other of the sides of this coin in relationships and it is certainly RARE to find a model of this that is successful in the world.

Those of us who are on the fringe of society because we are different, face even more challenges then the average person to find fulfilling healthy relationships.  In fact, when I officially announced that I was going to medically transition I had a dear friend who is very open minded say to me, " Now that is going to make it difficult for you to date."  As a person who had ridden a roller coaster in the dating world partly due to figuring out who I am inside and how to navigate that in this society safely and communicate it, this statement from my friend stopped me in my tracks and made me think.  My motivation to transition of course had nothing to do with dating or thinking about dating, it only had to do with being true to myself.  But my friends statement did make me wonder how would people view me?  Would they view me as even more of a freak?  Would there be anyone who understood and or got me?  I did not have the answers to any of these questions and went forward anyway because I was at a point where I could no longer live my life as if I was playing the part in a movie, or wearing a Halloween costume year around to make others feel more comfortable.  I could no longer live a lie.  I am happy to say that since transition the opposite has been true, I have had even more people want to date me, which surprised me.  I asked my partner why she thought this was so, and her response was " that when a person is authentic and true to themselves, that is attractive and rare." 

I have struggled with traditional models of things from an early age from gender roles to relationship models.  I always questioned what society feeds us as the way or the right way to be or have a relationship, although I did try to make parts of their way work for much of my life and failed miserably.  The models of monogamy and marriage we grow up with in society are usually accompanied with shame and guilt. If it is not done in the way the majority do it in our society even though that way has not been very successful for most we shame people as a society.  I have always said as a business person if marriage is my product and it is brought back to me because it did not work more then fifty percent of the time, I would be out of business!  Why do we keep using this model?  It makes me think of the Einstein quote "The true definition of insanity is, doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results,"  Yet I have to recognize that there are defiantly some things about the concept of marriage that are attractive to me.

• Having a strong home base
• Knowing you have a safe space
• Taking care of one another
• Knowing someone that well
• Creating a healthy sense of family
• Someone you can count on

 The parts that I want nothing to do with are

• Feeling boxed in - lack of freedom
• Jealousy
• Guilt if it does not work out - or if you are attracted to anyone else
• Expectations to fit a societal mold
• Gender role expectations within traditional relationships
• Weight of the concept that I had to be that persons everything and they had to be mine, FOREVER
• The things above created the feeling for me and does for many that I have talked with about this feeling that I could not be honest about my feelings and desires (coming from the south did not help with this, where few talk about anything REAL)

I have examined this and been able to look at the fact that there are some things I would like to take from that concept and create in a relationship.  Part of the freeing beauty I have discovered now is that I and my partner or partners have the liberating ability to CREATE how our relationship works best for us.  WOW! Why don't they tell you this as a young person.  I don't have to do it the way mom and dad or my grandparents did, or the way the majority does it.  I can breathe, create, experiment, and explore what works with my partner/partners.  There is no wrong or right way, there is the way that works for us.  I discovered that a polyamorous style of relationships works best for me and there are even different models of poly. Some people seem to think being poly means free sex with many, these are the same folks who think that all that gay men do is have sex.  If that were only true, laughing.  Poly to most in the poly community, is having more then one committed relationship with open communication with all involved.  This is not easy, this requires great communication skills and communication times two or three or whatever.  Then in the poly world there are primary and secondary relationships, triads and sometimes just now and then play partners. This maybe something that works for you or not, that is not the point.

The point of all of this is to examine how what we are doing is serving us.  I ask many people when it comes to tradition or rituals, "why do you do that."  Most reply, "because my family did it that way or my church, I don't know."  My next question is, "how is that serving you now?"  The same can be asked in the style of relationships we have or the way we negotiate or navigate our relationships.  Is using the model you are using serving you or could you create something more fitting for you and your partner or partners.  I have questioned myself this way about everything I thought I knew about relationships and sex to come to this place of discovery of what works for me.  My life's work now is to create safe space for all to be true to self and this is another area that many are not living true to themselves in for a variety of reasons and the reasons really don't matter.  What matters is finding a way to get to a place that we can be true to self. 

The beauty, fun and freedom to start from scratch and create what actually works for you is amazing and enlightening.  Most of us have never felt that we have the right to create our own, few people are told they can or it is ok to create your own.  I am here to tell you it is OK, you have the right.  Here are the guidelines that my partner and I have developed for our relationship that work for us.

• Always consider one another in all we do
• Be respectful of one another and of all involved
• Remember real authentic love fosters growth - (change is not threatening)
• Always give one another a safe space to be and grow and come back to
• Communicate/communicate/communicate with love and compassion

My desire as I said is for all to have the safe space to be true to self and to live in love and happiness.  I believe I had to walk the road of learning to be true to myself personally before I could have a healthy relationship with anyone else.  Then and only then have I been able to examine what is being true to myself in a relationship and am now able to come from a place of authenticity that changes everything.   I am so sorry for past relationships that I failed in because I was not at a place of authenticity within, because no matter how hard I tried to make those relationships work or my partners did there is no way to have open communication with someone else when one is not authentic with themselves or is living a lie.  If you and I are authentic and real with ourselves then we navigate the entire world including relationships in an entirely different way.  It is liberating and allows us to walk through the world with an new openness and willingness to be vulnerable.  Being authentic with oneself is constant work, but choosing that path is ultimately releasing.

Now go Create what serves you! Find a way to "BE TRUE TO SELF"

Healthy Boundary Setting Skills - part 1 of a series on Safety and Self - Defense

http://www.sgn.org/sgnnews41_37/page8.cfm

This is a published article - follow the link to read

Body Diversity & the "magic letter"

Body Diversity & the "magic letter" - the importance of being true to self my latest article in Seattle Gay News - follow the link to the story

http://www.sgn.org/sgnnews41_18/page17.cfm