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acceptance, balance, coping, family, future, gender identity, gender variance, healing, inspiration, love, self awareness, strength, transgender, transition
Sometimes I put things aside and wait until I am ready to digest them fully. Like the Tyra episode about gender non-conforming kids. It’s on my Tivo, but for the life of me I have not brought myself to watch it. Is it fear? Is it the notion of feeling so uncomfortable that makes me delay? Is it simple procrastination? I comfort myself by saying that I need to strive toward a balance in life so I go at my own speed on some things. In due time.
Today I sat in front of the laptop and finally watched and read about the documentary entitled Her Name Was Steven. Incredibly moving. It was sent to me months ago, but for some reason I was ready today. It struck me when she said that she, then he, confided in his wife that he needed to wear women’s clothes. The wife said she “played along” and dressed him up. Giggling, she said, and brought him to the living room to look in the mirror. “There she is,” he said. And his wife said she stopped laughing.
Steven said he battled that person in his life for so long and then that day he tried on the clothes she was released – born. Can you imagine someone having to hide their true feelings for decades? Running away from their truth? Tears fell from my eyes as I watched his anguish.
There was some footage about his, now her, son writing a note to her saying she was the best dad in the world and that no matter what people said or what she looked like, he would love her. The child sat smiling approvingly, but Susan was so emotional she couldn’t continue. All this time she hid from her authentic self because she thought that no one would accept her. And they do. The power of love is astonishing.
I guess we move in a personal timeframe, the path unbeknownst to us. Only divinely right. One day something happens and life is forever changed. Like a snap of your fingers. Perhaps the times when we feel off track, our true path could be around the next corner. Maybe in our running away (or in my procrastinating) we are getting closer every day. Just in our own way.
Interesting point about the old adage, “Timing is everything.” But what’s missing from it is the actually timing, as you so artfully write. One thing I have learned from my somewhat less than dedicated study of the Tao is that the timing of something involves both the thoughts about the issue or decision and the emotions of it. In short, any good decision has to both think and feel right.
And this isn’t something forced or pressured, but from one’s innate sense of being, intuition and consciousness. It will be right when it is there in both your heart and mind when you least expect and when you didn’t try to think or feel it. It is and you will know because it is, not that it came or you tried, but simply exists, in your heart and mind. You can’t explain it but will just know and feel it.
The neat thing is that children don’t have to think or feel, they automatically know because, to them, there was no other way or choice. It’s the innocene of their sense of being without knowing it, just being. Something, sadly, we lose or forget later in life.
I, like a lot in the transcommunity, didn’t watch Ms. Stanton’s documentary for reasons anyone can Google her news stories and interviews. No one doubts her own sense of being, but we can criticize her words and actions during and after her outing, simply distancing herself for all other “transwomen” and the community, and agreeing to the documentary to record her transistion in exchange for part of the cost of her surgery despites a full (6-figure) income and health insurance in her severance package.
No one doubts her right to get on with her life from anything trans, as probably 95+% of transwomen do post-transistion, but they didn’t diss everything and everyone trans in the process, even some with the advise and help of many of the leaders and more known in the community. I was struck by the saying that best described her by others who had known and spoken with her, “Arrogance is deaf and blind.”
Thank you for your post. As always, quite worthy and approrpirate.