The Self-Made Woman (or How I Stopped Worrying And Embraced The Transgender Experience)

That picture above is me today. But let me tell you - it has been a long strange journey to become the woman you see there. Let’s start at the beginning: my childhood. I always knew there was something which set me apart from the other kids. So many of them seemed to have figured out so much about the world already. They projected a confidence alien to me. I always hesitated at what my next move should be. How much I would reveal about myself. I had the hardest time wrapping my brain around the concept of gender. I was told that I was a boy – by my parents, my extended family, my friends, my doctor, my teachers. This contradicted what I felt inside. I wanted to do things that the girls were doing. Skipping rope. Playing jacks. Playing house. But during the eighties, in suburban Michigan, the boys and girls were sharply differentiated. Girls did Girl Stuff. Boys did Boy Stuff. And never the two shall meet.

As not to rock the boat or bring embarrassment or shame down upon me, I kept up the act that I was a boy. I didn’t want to deal with other people scoffing at something I felt so deeply. It would ruin me – it even ruins me now when people dismiss me out of hand when I share a conviction about myself that I hold as a fundamental truth. I kept that part of myself hidden. I would clandestinely browse the jewelry section of my step-mother's JCPenney catalogues. I would listen to Alanis Morrissette and Tracy Bonham in my bedroom, always hiding the CD’s before my guy friends came over, lest they tease me about listening to “angry white girl” music. I hid my deep story from my parents, friends, everybody - I was so afraid of rejection. In the 80’s and 90’s, the gender non-conforming people that I saw on TV were all sensationalized – as guests on trashy talk shows or as drag queens or as people my parents would dismiss as “a gay guy” or as “confused”. During that time period, there were very few positive examples of real, down to earth transgender people. I had no heroines from which to model and normalize my internal experience.

Things got particularly strange in high school. I didn't like being treated as a young man. I tried to remove gender from my social interactions. Since guys were starting to mingle with girls, I found an opportunity to insinuate myself into the Smart Girl Clique. But rather than being among them as a horny teenage boy showing off for potential girlfriends, I tried to fit in among them as one of them, as an equal, as just another one of the girls who wanted to share stories and talk girl talk and forge emotional bonds. That social experiment failed miserably – in hindsight, I believe it was because they didn’t or couldn’t or wouldn’t look past my gender to the person beneath my skin. One of the girl’s told me once that since I was a guy, I just “wouldn’t understand.” In their eyes, I was another guy working insidiously to drop their guard and come onto them…when in reality, I only ever wanted to make friends with these girls. I was ever so much more comfortable around them, sharing my emotions and ideas, than I ever was sitting silently among the guys, staring at the TV! One night, my girlfriend at the time and her friends plastered me with makeup. They practically used a spatula to cake it on. And though I feigned detachment throughout the scene, I secretly loved it. They took a Polaroid of me, which I still have to this day. My girlfriend’s brother came down the stairs. Our eyes met. In a ridiculous voice, I asked him, “Am I pretty?” He promptly turned around and disappeared up the stairs.

When I got home that night, I felt the usual gut-wrenching guilt and shame and depression - to know that I would always have to suppress that part of myself, that the world would never know this awful thing about me.
In my early twenties, I re-connected with a friend from high school. We began dating and moved in with each other and a ways down the line married. Somewhere in there we had a daughter together. She was her mom's second child. I helped raise my daughter’s older sister too.

I suppressed so much of myself during that decade. I was resigned to my fate of living out my days as a man. I had known for a long while that I had a feminine soul, but accepted that in this life, the closest I would get to living as a woman would ever be by vicariously living through my wife. I would suggest what clothes she should buy. How she should wear her hair. I’d ask her very specific questions about how it felt to be a woman - from inside her skin.
During that time, I was depressed and disconnected, unhappy and withdrawn. I wasn't a very good boyfriend or husband, or a particularly good father, though near the end, I tried very hard. It wasn't enough though. We separated when my daughter turned four years old and we later divorced.

A couple years of serial monogamy followed. I jaunted from one relationship to the next, keeping a woman in my life so I could vicariously live through her. Eventually the reality of my situation caught up to me: I was getting older. I was thirty. I was lying on my couch, like any other lazy Sunday, and I was thinking forward toward the future. Two realizations hit me. One: I didn't want to die never having experienced living as my authentic self or living life as the woman that I so desperately wanted to express. And two: I didn't want my family and friends and the world, after I died, to remember me as a man. That guy was ever only a comfortable lie that I had wrapped myself in like a protective blanket. I envisioned my gravestone - chiseled with my given name and the epitaph "loving father.” I panicked. I knew that no matter what the consequences, I had to align my body with my soul and share my true self with the world.

I have many stories that I could share about transitioning my identity and physical expression from the lie of the man to the authenticity of a woman. It's been a profound experience. It's catalyzed a fundamental shift in my worldview - how I see other people, how I interact with them, how myself and others fit into our society. It's been frightening and wonderful and joyous and depressing and painful and enlightening. I have never felt as hurt as I can feel now. I no longer have that male facade to shelter me from the blows. The person that people are interacting with now is all me – I am bare and vulnerable and living with it all on the line. This is the Real Me. And I say that I have never felt as hurt, but I have never felt as happy or as loved or as accepted as I can feel now. Just as that male façade sheltered me from the cruelty in the world, it also insulated me from the joy and love in the world. I demolished the barrier between myself and other people, and I am directly accessible to the acts of others.

I can feel love so much greater than I ever could have while the Real Me was hidden away. I feel the love that this world offers - my friends, my colleagues, my family, my girlfriends that I have had, even the passing kindness of a stranger. I feel like I’ve become real. I love myself, I love my life, and the people in it. I'm proud to be a transgender woman…when I'm not being bombarded by vicious propaganda that politicizes and attacks my authentic lived identity.

I am blessed with the wisdom of living in two genders - and living between them. Not many people can say that. I think it helps me to be a kinder person - more empathetic, compassionate, caring, driven to mutual understanding and partnership. When I think on my journey, I recall reading about the role the shaman fills in indigenous tribes. And similarly, the ubiquitous story of the archetypal Hero as described by Joseph Campbell in his magnum opus, The Hero With A Thousand Faces. The archetype of the shaman and the transgender person have much in common. The story of the shaman takes them through some terrible ordeal – a severe physical illness, a fasting-induced or psychedelic-induced spirit journey, or some other momentous trial that takes them to faraway lands, or even beyond the veil of death. Our shaman returns from their journey a profoundly changed person. They have been exposed to the Other. They have seen and felt and experienced overwhelmingly exotic sights, lands, people, and customs. Those who move beyond the veil of death and return, report profound experiences such as waking up in another plane of existence, described as the spirit world, and interacting with autonomous entities, often described as spirits or ancestors. These are life-altering experiences. The shaman’s entire mental framework is re-written, their brain re-wired, they become woke to another mode of being that is far beyond the mundane world of everyday life.

The shaman returns to their people anxious to impart their new wisdom. But their peers don’t comprehend their ramblings – the Other can only be understood through experience, not through story alone. Their peers may become too frightened or overwhelmed to comprehend. They may be gripped by an irrational fear that this exotic knowledge will push their sanity to the brink of their reality tunnel, and push them into the unknown. People will fight hard to secure their grasp on reality when contradictory information threatens it – even when that information would otherwise appear valid.

The tribe ultimately shuns the shaman and casts them out. The shaman is not quite one of the people but not quite of the Other either. They exist somewhere in between. Their ordeal has forever changed them. They are forever touched. They take up residence on the fringes of society…but even as their people maintain a distance, they understand that the shaman has access to esoteric knowledge. The shaman can see more, understand more, see beyond the mundane. They fill a necessary role within the tribal structure, and in some ways, they are revered as the steward of arcane knowledge. They can communicate with the Other, they can arbitrate between it and this realm, and they have the power to heal and bless and grant good fortune – through sage advice, no doubt. Many even live genderless – because the Other has no comprehensible gender. Ultimately, the tribe comes to revere the shaman as a critical component to the maintenance of their collective well-being.

This is the narrative that I choose to accept and embody, despite the mischaracterization of the transgender community as depicted in mainstream and social media. I have seen and experienced so much. I have felt the changes that testosterone bring and the influence of estrogen. I have been accepted among predominantly male or female or even genderless peers - and seen the behaviors and psychosocial dynamics of all three. I have seen people at their best and at their worst. I know what women talk about and feel. I know what men talk about and think. I know people who function as both and neither gender in every day society - other shamanic gender non-conformists like me.

I pray that one day American society sees the value in the transgender and gender non-conforming experience. We preserve a certain wisdom and perspective that is closed to most people. This is a lofty goal, as many of us struggle simply to live from day to day. We face adversity from without and from within. Our demographic suffers from the highest rate of suicide attempts in America, at 41% of our population. We are more at risk to use tobacco products, and abuse alcohol and other substances. We are susceptible to engaging in behaviors that put our sexual health at risk. We don’t do any of these things because we're wired to be miscreants or deviants – we’re susceptible to addiction because it brings a quick escape from the pain and rejection of a society who doesn't understand us and even, in some regions, despises us and would eliminate us.

I, too, have engaged in all these behaviors. I've been clean for a long while now, and it feels good to be present and engaged with the people around me. The best explanation I've heard for why we, as social pariahs, seek relief in substances was a TedX given by Johann Hair. I'm sure not every trans person will agree with Johann's statements for themselves - but for me, they hit home. Johann said: "The opposite of addiction is connection." I'm going to repeat that: "The opposite of addiction is connection." When we are pushed to the boundaries of society, when our families reject us, when politicians demonize us, when institutions deny our sincerely lived identities - we feel disconnected from everybody and everything. We become strangers in a strange land, where we don't belong, where we don't want to be, where others don’t want us, and with no exit.

This is why I feel inclusion initiatives are so very important, both in our public institutions, our private businesses, and in greater American culture. As marginalized people, the trans community benefits greatly when society embraces us. We need to see positive role-models in the media that we consume. We need to receive support from family and friends. We need the opportunity to contribute to the good of society. We want to feel deserving of value and respect, just like any other American. Because we deserve value and respect.

We are powerful and empowered too. There are many benefits society can glean from our extraordinary journey through the Other. We can bridge gaps between disparate experiences. We can explain the eccentricities of gender. We can arbitrate between non-intersecting reality tunnels. We can be shamans for the modern era - if American society would only embrace us, and show us the respect and dignity that we deserve as human beings.

I am proud to be transgender. I am proud of my extraordinary experiences, knowledge, and characteristics. I urge any cisgender people reading this to actively seek out a transgender person to befriend - talk with them about their life and their experience. Tell them that you value their identity and their contribution to the collective wisdom of our society. With such a simple act of openness, you might just change the course of that person's life. And for the conversation, I guarantee you'll learn more about yourself and about the Human Condition lived by us all.