Being Me

So, normally I somehow manage to totally miss milestone moments of opportunity, but today I managed to get one without even knowing it at that moment.

Yesterday had a rough patch for me, a moment of when I just felt like there was so much that I had to encompass in the moment and I just couldn't.

Just about a week and a half away from GCS and now I am just marking time, but some curious observations along the way...

I don't do New Years Resolutions, but I kind of have one this year.

We're on the cusp of a new year and as I look back at 2022, I am really happy to be leaving it behind.

In Irish legend, the butterfly symbolizes rebirth and metamorphisis. 

So, recently, I was in a work meeting on diversity and inclusion and the discussion topic was on creating an inclusive space. Meanwhile, a person in the meeting had a Zoom background featuring the works of the the deeply transphobic bigot author from the UK.

I experienced an incredibly strong emotional response today and I am left trying to really understand the origin of it... sharing it helps me think about it.

There is something to be said for an unexpected cry that you had no idea you really needed, but actually did. It's deeply healing and something that was absent from my life before.

While I fully came out in January of this year, the real start of my journey was on July 6th, 2020. That evening, shortly after dinner, I took my first dose of Estradiol and started walking the path that has set me free. It makes me smile, in hindsight, to recall that I took that first dose with all of the gravitas and ceremony of a morning vitamin, I have a knack for sailing past the big moment. I think, as I took the pills out of the bottle, I was just telling myself to get on with it and so I did. Nevertheless, a year has passed and, wow, what a year it has been. Physically, a lot of change has happened, some subtle, some not quite so much. My skin is softer and less oily. I get cold in a sauna. I have acquired a surprisingly deep love of 95% dark chocolate. More noticeable is that I am also reshaping in response to one of nature's most powerful biological chemicals. Each of these, and more, are an incredible source of affirmation for me. It is difficult to convey to cis people ...

This past Friday, I finally received my new birth certificate with my name and my true gender on it. Legally me and somehow, way more than I expected, validating.

There’s been some recent news around the rebranding of the Mr. Potato Head line to drop the “Mr.” as a part of the overall branding strategy. The characters of Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head would still exist, and be sold, but the overall branding is being changed to be more inclusive. All in all, a pretty innocuous change, I think, but not to the world of social media. I hesitated to post this, I'll be very honest, but I cannot begin to change my corner of the world without making some, who are closer to me, a little uncomfortable. So, yes, some who read this may well read themselves into the post, but before you get defensive, please ask yourself why you are feeling that way. The reason it’s on my mind at all, despite being well past the age of actually caring about a toy potato, is the casual transphobia that arose as a result of the news. Whether it was meme jokes showing a confused Mr. Potato Head unable to pee at a urinal or a collection of posts and comments along the line of “He...

I tweeted the other day “one of the things that feels really good about being out is that I feel like I can finally react to things from friends and family like I always wanted to.” I don’t think I can overstate the sense of emotional happiness that stems from that simple truth.

So, what a very strange year that was...