Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, 12 Guys & a Girl
A weekend with old friends added some stark reality in the considerations and consequences of transitioning MtF
R ecently I met up with some old friends from high school for a weekend getaway. It has been over 40 years since we walked out of those hallowed halls and a lot has changed. And a lot has stayed remarkably the same. One thing that has stayed constant is the genuine affection we have for one another as lifelong friends. Another is that I have remained in the closet as a transgender woman.
That created some internal conflict before the weekend, and some reflective soul searching on the way home. All of this wrapped up in a Covid leaf.
Anticipation of the weekend was drenched with high anxiety. I have recently begun to accept and explore my authentic nature as a woman. I now venture out as myself on an irregular basis. Not every day. Not all the time. But as much as I am able within the current confines of my life. And I have enough experiences and enough time out to begin to see how life may be living as a transgender woman. It has begun to change how I see life, and my place in it.
As I put myself out in the world, I find that I want more. Simply put, the more places I go as Joanna, the more places I want to go as Joanna. The more time I spend as Joanna, the more time I want to be Joanna. The more people who know me as Joanna, the more comfortable and territorial I get in wanting all new people I meet in all new places I go to know me only as Joanna. It is a transformation into myself.
And now, I find this new caveat at play: I have started considering, as we are interacting, how people who know me as a guy would react and treat me if instead I were a woman. On the outside. It is almost an out of body experience. A Matrix Moment.
Imagining being — and being seen as — a woman in real situations in real time amplifies a recent struggle: the fear that people MUST be able to see that I am hiding myself. That clearly I am not a man. That I am merely masquerading as male and most obviously have the soul of a woman. When you’ve kept a secret for so long, at some point, cracks begin to appear and propagate in an otherwise practiced veneer of maleness.
It is a lot to maintain.
So I entered into the thought of attending this weekend with the guys feeling like an impostor. If anyone would recognize a shift in my self-awareness and see through my deteriorating mask, it would be people who have known me longer than most.
I met up with ‘the guys’ on Friday night and despite my anticipatory anxiety, it was really great to see them. I discovered how much I missed them, recalling all the old familiar stories with all the older, familiar faces.
At the same time there were moments of intense discomfort when conversations would stray into the waters of transgender topics or the world of the LGBTQ+. But there was at least one friend who is a big supporter of all people in general, and of the LGBTQ Community in particular. When I come out, he will be one of the first I’ll choose to come out to. There is always hope.
The weekend added some stark reality to considerations and consequences of transitioning. Recent discussions with my counselor have centered more on this reality as well. We are moving away from the abstract and into more concrete thought. Sliding from mere mental exercises onto a marble staircase. One step at a time, up a spiral climb. In heels.
Like everyone, if and when I descend back down that staircase as my true self, there will be loss. I know there will be. As we sat around the campfire and people got up to go to bed, a part of me couldn’t help but fast-forward to imagining some of those same guys walking away for an entirely different reason. And if they walk because they don’t understand, I will get it. I don’t get it myself much of the time.
One of the best limited analogies I can offer is that being transgender is like living life wearing your clothes inside out and backwards. It’s uncomfortable. But you are the only one who is. Nobody else sees or feels the mismatch. But it goes deeper than your clothes. It permeates every thought and movement. It’s just that the movement we need is not on our shoulder. Just the weight of a thousand sleepless nights wondering why we feel so wrong, and why God can’t wake us up with narrowed shoulders and widened hips.
“Hey jude, don’t be afraid.
You were made to go out and get her.
The minute you let her under your skin,
Then you begin to make it better.”
Regardless of how others react, I now see that there is loss whether I come out or not. There is loss whether I transition or remain hidden or separated in two worlds. Because if I choose not to be myself and merge my two worlds, I will not be living an authentic life.
I will not be honest about who I am.
I will live a life as someone I think I should be. Rather than live a life as me.
And I cannot be fully connected with those around me, those I call friends, if I am not me.
This has become more evident with my recent (re-)discovery of Brené Brown’s Houston Ted Talk. As an aside, it’s interesting to note Brown appears to still struggle with aspects of her decision to, in some way, come out and fully reveal herself. So we all struggle with this idea and reality of living whole-hearted, allowing others to see us, warts and all.
If you have not seen her talk, or read her books, spoiler alert. I will summarize my big take-away just below. So if you want to watch it first, or read one of her 5 books, or watch her Netflix special, or whatever, go ahead now, because I am going to keep typing here… And actually, you have already read the majority of the take away. But continue on. Please.
So the big take away and tear producing chain of thought is as follows.
Brown is a researcher — and a storyteller. And she told a story of her research studying the connection between people. She relayed that after years in social work, she came to understand that connectedness is why we are here. It is what brings meaning to life. It is what matters.
In studying connection, she soon discovered the greatest enemy of connection. And the name of the enemy is shame. She defined shame as anything that creates a fear of disconnection. Shame prevents a person from living openly, constantly chaining us down with self-imposed thoughts and fears that “I am not ----- enough.”
I am not smart enough.
I am not pretty enough.
I am not good enough.
I don’t make enough.
I don’t deserve what I make.
This discovery came from interviewing hundreds of people and hearing or reading hundreds of stories.
Brown says we were hard wired at birth with an innate and unrelenting desire and need to be connected, to be in relationship.*
But because of shame, and the fear of disconnection due to discovery of who we really are, we erect barriers to protect ourselves from being seen — and to try to selectively numb the emotions arising from not being enough.
Unfortunately these barriers are not discriminatory. Not only do they block those parts of us we want to hide, they hide and numb everything. In the world of shame, there is no local anesthetic, only a general. And when you seek to anesthetize yourself, you anesthetize your entire self. So, in trying to numb your insecurity and sadness, you also numb your joy, creativity, and happiness.
However, Brown saw that not all people allowed shame to keep them from relationship and connection.
Why? Brown discovered that the thing that differentiates them from those living under the shadow of shame was that they simply believed that they were worthy of love and belonging. That they’re loved for who they are. Brown discovered that these people only got to this point of worthiness when they were able to embrace extreme vulnerability. They chose to live imperfectly and not upon an enhanced image they constructed for public consumption.
Instead, they lived as who they truly are. Or, as she stated, they were willing to let go of who they thought they should be, in order to be who they truly were. Brown calls this choice courage, and explained that the word means to live wholehearted.
She also found that these people believed or understood what made them vulnerable is what made them beautiful. And they embraced the idea or reality that vulnerability is necessary in order to live authentically.
There is perhaps no group or community more characterized by living a life behind a projected image than the transgender community. There is no more basic information that begins to define who we are than our gender. It is undeniable.
Simply ask yourself what is the first thing people ask when a woman announces they are going to have a baby? Okay. Maybe a due date. But immediately after that people ask, ‘are you having a boy or a girl?’ The world wants to prepare how to treat us as a person before we have even arrived, by knowing if we are differentiated as a “boy" or a “girl.” Just the mention of those words conjures up expectations and thoughts in our minds. The nursery rhymes start flowing freely, even with the recent efforts to appreciate each person for who they are. Many of us still flash to sugar and spice, or puppy dog tails.
So when someone is living behind a projection of a gender that belies their own sense of self, there is no greater ‘not enough’. And this is why there is such potential for shame in the transgender community. And so much pain. And so much disconnectedness. And so much risk. Because transgender people have spent years, decades, living in denial of who they are in order to try to live as who they think they ought to be.
If anyone knew this deep secret about me, nobody would want to be in a relationship with me.
Despite the recent Supreme Court ruling, in addition to personal relationships, a transgender person risks their employment in coming out to live a courageous life. And with the risk of unemployment comes the risk of loss of insurance, a place to live, and being able to support all the other basic human needs. Including connectedness.
As Brown later relates, when you live a life of courage and risk, and embrace vulnerability, you are going to get your ass kicked. There will be loss. You will be subject to more ridicule than if you continue in the obscurity and safety of your shame fueled force-fields.
Life ain’t easy. And my shields are still up in the ‘other’ world.
However, I do absolutely know I am loved. Some people do know all of me. They know my struggle. But not everyone. I just don’t know if I am ready to enter the Arena of Ass Kicking quite yet when it comes to my gender.
Which brings me to Brown’s final point. Entering the Arena of Ass Kicking is like getting married, or buying a house, or having a child. There will never be the perfect time to do it. You will never be fully ready. You will never have it all figured out before you get in the Coliseum. To think you can “Armor Up" or be bullet-proof going in is to misunderstand the nature and essence of the exercise. There is no invincibility inside the arena. The whole point is when you step into the Arena of Ass Kicking, you are stripped of your shields.
It’s like the old Visa commercials:
“But remember, if you choose to enter the Coliseum, be prepared to get a bloody nose and be ready to embrace your vulnerability. Because at the Arena of Ass Kicking you can’t hide behind a facade. And they don’t accept American shame dress.”
I appreciate Brené Brown’s roadmap to living freely and wholehearted, embracing my ‘wth’ reveal. I am at the gate.
They say when you are about to swim in a cold lake or pool it is always easiest to just dive in. And a couple of the guys literally did just that at the lake that weekend. I chose not to, figuratively or literally. I had a long drive home, and I wasn’t sure if I could make it on a bruised and battered ass. But the journey is not over.
Hey jude, don’t let me down.
You have found her, now go and get her.
Remember to let her into your heart,
Then you can start to make it better.
*My note here — we are hard wired to be in relationship because that is how our creator made us. Because he himself wants to be in relationship with us. And whether or not we choose to transition, the creator of the universe knows you more intimately than anyone and loves you more deeply than you can possibly imagine.
