makin' it real
01-08-2011, 04:32 AM
Hi all. I’m not sure how to talk about the things that are moving in me right now, but I really want to try.
I watched a TED talk by Brene Brown at http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html. I love these talks, and this one had me crying a couple times right off the bat, because I recognized myself in what she says. Early on she says:
“Shame is really easily understood as the fear of disconnection. Is there something about me, that if other people know it or see it, that I won’t be worthy of connection. The things I can tell you about it, it’s universal. We all have it. The only people who don’t experience shame have no capacity for human empathy or connection. No one wants to talk about it, and the less you talk about it the more you have it.”
“What underpinned this shame, this ‘I’m not good enough’, which we all know that feeling. ‘I’m not “blank” enough.’ ‘I’m not thin enough, rich enough, beautiful enough, smart enough, promoted enough.’ The thing that underpinned this was excruciating vulnerability. This idea of, in order for connection to happen, we have to allow ourselves to be seen, really seen.”
She goes on to talk about the radical courage required to allow ourselves to be seen. The courage required to allow ourselves to be vulnerable. And that that courage, and that vulnerability, are what allow us to experience genuine connection with others, and experience happiness and joy in life.
I have felt ashamed about my crossdressing all my life. I’m 50 now, and have CDed since at least 5 years old. I stole clothes and purged. I sneaked clothes from housemates’ dressers and closets, then hated myself for it. I knew I was deformed somehow, and that no one else was sick the way I was.
So I kept it secret. A hidden, hated, sick part of myself that I knew everyone else would hate too if they knew about it. I had a girlfriend for a few years, starting about 10 years ago, who accepted this part of me more than I did myself. I ended the relationship before we could get married. Fear of something, maybe intimacy, kept me out. Maybe fear of me seeing more of me.
Finally, about a year ago, I realized this CDing wasn’t going away so I might as well accept it. It was actually a little more active than that sounds, because I consciously chose to embrace the parts of me that I had hated for so long. It scared me, but I knew I had to accept all of me or the rest of my life would be lived as a fake, hollow, shell. That’s not okay. I want to fully inhabit my life, and thrive and sing and celebrate all that moves through me.
So I accepted that I have a part of me who feels like a woman, and who feels best wearing women’s clothing. I started buying clothes for me, for her, knowing I’ll not be purging anymore. I started using herbs and creams to feminize my body, so my body could more closely reflect outside how I feel myself to be inside. I know that approach doesn’t work for everybody, but it does for me. That’s not the point. What matters is that I love how my body feels. I love waking up each morning and seeing the extra curves. My body feels great. I love getting dressed each day wearing some or all women’s clothes. I love it, and it feels right.
But recently I’ve been feeling some fear again. My sister is getting married in a couple months. I’ll be seeing family I’ve not seen in years. I’ve decided to delay piercing my ears until after the wedding so I don’t have to explain it to my family. That feels like hiding, and that feels bad. I’ve had thoughts about how my brother and others might compare him and me, since we had been looking more and more alike as we’ve matured. I’m afraid my physical feminization will be noticed in comparison and commented on. Again I want to hide it. A third thing now, I’ve been given a solid opportunity to create a new program at work that I am passionate about. It will have me be very public – media, conferences, leader in the field type stuff – and I wonder if I should come out to my peers now, to avoid any possible fears of exposure later that might threaten the program.
As much as those thoughts have been ringing alarm bells for me, indicating areas where further acceptance is needed, what matters to me even more are direct, loving relationships. I have come out to numerous friends, both men and women, and been accepted. Only one man has reacted with reluctance, but even he remains active in my circle. I’ve had scared reactions inside myself, where I wobble in my self-definition after presenting myself differently to others, but then I find a new balance and keep moving forward.
But I don’t have an intimate, romantic relationship, and that concerns me. I’m watching a movie right now, even after having just seen and cried to this TED talk clip, and I’m looking at the lead character, a physician (someone I can identify with), and I'm experiencing something like shame, an aching inside of “I’ll never be good enough to be held or loved or respected the way he is”.
And the source of that ache inside me is my psychological transgenderism and my blending of the physical characteristics of men and women. I see him wearing a thin shirt in public that I couldn’t wear without a covering or a compressing undergarment. I see in the movie a woman leaning into him for the first time as they dance, and I think how I would have to prepare the woman for the shapes and softness she’ll encounter leaning against my chest. And I think all is lost. I’ll never be able to find someone to love me like that, ever again.
Unless I am willing to be radically vulnerable. The lesson of the TED talk. Unless I am willing to take the risks and let myself be known. All of me. To say this is who I am, I like me, and I am worthwhile just as I am. The only way others can have a chance in hell of accepting me is when I first accept and appreciate myself. It requires that I be willing to not hide me from me, and then that I not hide me from others. Not in a confrontational, in-your-face kind of way, which is actually still a protective posture, but in a more loving, accepting, here is who I am kind of way that genuinely exposes me to the risk of being hurt and the risk of being fully seen.
It scares me to think of that. To think that I am not just like I imagine everyone else is supposed to be (even though I know better). And that’s where the radical vulnerability and radical courage come in. Do I dare to be myself? Do you?
So that’s what is moving in me right now. Thanks for reading through this.
Do we dare?
~Rachel
I watched a TED talk by Brene Brown at http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html. I love these talks, and this one had me crying a couple times right off the bat, because I recognized myself in what she says. Early on she says:
“Shame is really easily understood as the fear of disconnection. Is there something about me, that if other people know it or see it, that I won’t be worthy of connection. The things I can tell you about it, it’s universal. We all have it. The only people who don’t experience shame have no capacity for human empathy or connection. No one wants to talk about it, and the less you talk about it the more you have it.”
“What underpinned this shame, this ‘I’m not good enough’, which we all know that feeling. ‘I’m not “blank” enough.’ ‘I’m not thin enough, rich enough, beautiful enough, smart enough, promoted enough.’ The thing that underpinned this was excruciating vulnerability. This idea of, in order for connection to happen, we have to allow ourselves to be seen, really seen.”
She goes on to talk about the radical courage required to allow ourselves to be seen. The courage required to allow ourselves to be vulnerable. And that that courage, and that vulnerability, are what allow us to experience genuine connection with others, and experience happiness and joy in life.
I have felt ashamed about my crossdressing all my life. I’m 50 now, and have CDed since at least 5 years old. I stole clothes and purged. I sneaked clothes from housemates’ dressers and closets, then hated myself for it. I knew I was deformed somehow, and that no one else was sick the way I was.
So I kept it secret. A hidden, hated, sick part of myself that I knew everyone else would hate too if they knew about it. I had a girlfriend for a few years, starting about 10 years ago, who accepted this part of me more than I did myself. I ended the relationship before we could get married. Fear of something, maybe intimacy, kept me out. Maybe fear of me seeing more of me.
Finally, about a year ago, I realized this CDing wasn’t going away so I might as well accept it. It was actually a little more active than that sounds, because I consciously chose to embrace the parts of me that I had hated for so long. It scared me, but I knew I had to accept all of me or the rest of my life would be lived as a fake, hollow, shell. That’s not okay. I want to fully inhabit my life, and thrive and sing and celebrate all that moves through me.
So I accepted that I have a part of me who feels like a woman, and who feels best wearing women’s clothing. I started buying clothes for me, for her, knowing I’ll not be purging anymore. I started using herbs and creams to feminize my body, so my body could more closely reflect outside how I feel myself to be inside. I know that approach doesn’t work for everybody, but it does for me. That’s not the point. What matters is that I love how my body feels. I love waking up each morning and seeing the extra curves. My body feels great. I love getting dressed each day wearing some or all women’s clothes. I love it, and it feels right.
But recently I’ve been feeling some fear again. My sister is getting married in a couple months. I’ll be seeing family I’ve not seen in years. I’ve decided to delay piercing my ears until after the wedding so I don’t have to explain it to my family. That feels like hiding, and that feels bad. I’ve had thoughts about how my brother and others might compare him and me, since we had been looking more and more alike as we’ve matured. I’m afraid my physical feminization will be noticed in comparison and commented on. Again I want to hide it. A third thing now, I’ve been given a solid opportunity to create a new program at work that I am passionate about. It will have me be very public – media, conferences, leader in the field type stuff – and I wonder if I should come out to my peers now, to avoid any possible fears of exposure later that might threaten the program.
As much as those thoughts have been ringing alarm bells for me, indicating areas where further acceptance is needed, what matters to me even more are direct, loving relationships. I have come out to numerous friends, both men and women, and been accepted. Only one man has reacted with reluctance, but even he remains active in my circle. I’ve had scared reactions inside myself, where I wobble in my self-definition after presenting myself differently to others, but then I find a new balance and keep moving forward.
But I don’t have an intimate, romantic relationship, and that concerns me. I’m watching a movie right now, even after having just seen and cried to this TED talk clip, and I’m looking at the lead character, a physician (someone I can identify with), and I'm experiencing something like shame, an aching inside of “I’ll never be good enough to be held or loved or respected the way he is”.
And the source of that ache inside me is my psychological transgenderism and my blending of the physical characteristics of men and women. I see him wearing a thin shirt in public that I couldn’t wear without a covering or a compressing undergarment. I see in the movie a woman leaning into him for the first time as they dance, and I think how I would have to prepare the woman for the shapes and softness she’ll encounter leaning against my chest. And I think all is lost. I’ll never be able to find someone to love me like that, ever again.
Unless I am willing to be radically vulnerable. The lesson of the TED talk. Unless I am willing to take the risks and let myself be known. All of me. To say this is who I am, I like me, and I am worthwhile just as I am. The only way others can have a chance in hell of accepting me is when I first accept and appreciate myself. It requires that I be willing to not hide me from me, and then that I not hide me from others. Not in a confrontational, in-your-face kind of way, which is actually still a protective posture, but in a more loving, accepting, here is who I am kind of way that genuinely exposes me to the risk of being hurt and the risk of being fully seen.
It scares me to think of that. To think that I am not just like I imagine everyone else is supposed to be (even though I know better). And that’s where the radical vulnerability and radical courage come in. Do I dare to be myself? Do you?
So that’s what is moving in me right now. Thanks for reading through this.
Do we dare?
~Rachel