And So It Is

It’s really simple: Do You Believe You’re Worthy Of Knowing Yourself?

I am recovered but they keep telling me I’m sick.

If you’re new here…Hi, I’m Alex. I use they/them pronouns and I’m 46 years old. My background includes over 25 years in the fitness industry as a personal trainer and group fitness instructor. I shifted into a career as a Peer Recovery Coach, recognizing dance fitness as one pathway into my recovery. I work with Loving Beyond Understanding, the Trans- Continental Pipeline and Over The Rainbow Project and use my lived experience to hold doors and windows and widen avenues for others so they too have the tools, resources and support they need to live.

I grew up in Dublin, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus. I used to describe my childhood as “fine” yet I was unable to identify what happened to me for decades. Growing up, I had everything I needed; food on the table, trendy clothes, band and piano lessons, went to Methodist church every week up until 8th grade, sports activities, family vacations, a car when I turned 16, workouts with a personal trainer, a paid-for college education at a Division 1 school where I was an athlete, and financial help even after I left college.

I didn’t have any queer people around me that I knew of until college. No overt and proud representation of someone who lived outside a gender binary. As a trans/nonbinary person, the terms of my long-term recovery flows on the edge where compulsory heteronormativity and transgender meet. It was only a matter of time before I overcame its sludge.

White upper-middle-class suburbia in the 1980s and 90s paved the way for me to easily ignore myself. The river of oppression goes one way only. I was sexually abused by multiple neighborhood boys which I never told my parents about until decades later. I blamed myself and felt disgusted about my body while my parents lived indifferently. It’s impossible to discuss my gender identity without recognizing that my family’s system was the longest root of my deepest pain.

My mom was submerged in patriarchal and misogynistic expectations, dismissing her dreams and living for everyone else. My presence was never really held all the way. Even today, the thought of being around her, I can feel myself diminishing. This is one boundary I have learned to hold through recovery. Shame makes one go numb and I’ll never do that to myself again. To me, it felt like, I grew up in a house of ghosts. I’d told my mom to divorce my dad when I was 9 but staying together for the kids is very real. As an adult, I can acknowledge the dynamics at play that I didn’t understand then yet internally a pathway to the future was being laid.

My dad was a person with an alcohol use disorder. I know he is more than his alcohol use yet I often mention this when I speak of him. His use created so much harm in our home and became as familiar as the walls. I don’t remember him not drinking. No child can stand watching their parents destroy themselves. A successful business owner and a highly creative person, I sense since his death almost 3 years now, my dad lived a life underwater. As I watched him cross over on Zoom (Ohio to Colorado), I cried because I was relieved for myself and him. It was the first time I saw him take giant gulps of air. Maybe he was flying free towards that big light everyone talks about. My body will never forget what it was like to be in the energy of my home and I hold that with gratitude through a lot of therapy, time, space, and reflection.

I don’t think there’s anything worse than being raised by people who didn’t believe they were worthy. It prevented them from being themselves - thus the ghost reference. They navigated the world through victimhood and used language that taught unworthiness through emotional manipulation, gaslighting, and devaluation of lived experience to uphold an image of function. If my parents lived underwater that meant I was born underwater and me wanting to surface meant I was never going to win. And I wasn’t going to be able to explain it to them. In other words, I fired myself from the role of feeling responsible for their lives that as a child, I felt was mine to bear. In the summer of 2024 I restricted contact with my family of origin.

I have stumbled along the line of questioning, “Was it really that bad?” With my mind quiet, I search my heart for answers where I am reassured I am safe now.

To address “how did I know”... a common question I get as a trans person: When I was 5 years old, I had what I can only describe as a deeply spiritual experience that showed me something was up. More spiritual experiences came later. It was the first time I “met” my higher self.

I was in the garden with my dad. He was wearing only his shorts and flip-flops in the hot Ohio sun. Seeing him like that reflected something familiar. I would often watch him shave, pretending like I was doing it too using my hair barrettes. I loved going into his closet touching his suits, wearing his shoes, and practicing tying a tie.

I asked my dad if I could take my shirt off and he agreed. As I did, it felt like an affirming lightning bolt came out of the sky shedding tremendous warmth on me. Call it a download, intuition, God, whatever, an inner voice, but it was loud and clear. The feeling was I was not who I was told to be nor who they thought I was. Something was “off”. In a moment, my mom came to the window, sounding panicked that I couldn’t “do that”, she said.

I stood in the grass holding both deep shame and pure joy at the same time. Opposite and balancing forces, both are positively disruptive. Joy is an antidote. Shame is a weighted blanket we unconsciously carry asking us to look it square in the eye. I started to adopt the perspective that if I could make shame my friend, maybe it wouldn’t eat me alive. If I could learn to hold it gently, I would see it was here to protect me. If could express its darkness with my creativity, I would survive this hell. If I could teach myself to listen to its ache, it would tell me the truth.

Was I a boy? Was I a girl? And the thought of being neither never occurred to me.

In the garden, I caught a glimpse of something beyond. It scared me the hell out of me. Literally. It began to push from the inside. So powerful and more beautiful than my little body could tolerate at the time. That is the memory my body answers with when I’m asked how I knew. It was a homecoming…an experience where I gained deeper insight because what I tasted in that moment was freedom. It gave me direction as it was here and gone in an instant.

I came out gay at age 19. The term lesbian didn’t fit. Around that same time, I started performing in drag and became quite successful at it. The drag stage was the first place I found a courageous space to explore. After years of wondering what he’d look like if my parents had had a son, it was a longer look in the mirror. I didn’t just like what I saw when I was in drag but actually loved myself in drag. I also knew I wasn’t a man. Talk about adding layers of questions.

I met a guy at age 21 and we started dating. I finished college and we moved to Colorado, marrying six years later. Believing at the time that abuse was only being hit, he was emotionally, verbally, financially, and psychologically abusive. We had two kids together, with whom he now has no parenting time or decision-making rights due to his actions and behavior.

My daughter came out trans shortly before she turned 6 years old. Her coming out made all the signs I’d been getting easier to connect. She loathed being called handsome even at age 2. When I told her it was time for a haircut, she would refuse. Often wearing pants upside down on her head, I wonder to her if that was her long hair. When she was 4 years old, we were sitting together in the public bathroom (potty practice!) and she said, “Mama, I know my body is a boy but my soul is a girl.” At 6 years old, she sat down at the dinner table and said, “I need to tell you guys something. I have an announcement to make. My name is Ari and I’m a girl.”

I share this because, without our kids, our stories aren’t as full as we think they are. Coming from parents who lived like they were unworthy of change and being themselves, I believe I am worthy. This is very hard for a lot of people.

I did what I think any kind parent needs to do when their child reveals they are trans. I believed her. Ari didn’t say she was “trans” when she came out. She said who she sees she is…a girl.

As a Recovery Coach, we are trained to center the person in front of us, harnessing multiple pathways into their recovery that helps them create a life that works for them. This is upheld in other areas of social justice work as a basic practice in allyship. Ally stands for A.L.L.Y. Acknowledge, Listen, Leverage, and Yield to center the person impacted.

I fundamentally believe everyone is capable of seeing themselves. The truth remains: I am not my daughter but it is my job to believe her when she tells me how she sees herself. I was able to hear my daughter because somewhere in me was 5-year-old Alex still standing in the garden, waiting for me to come back and reassure them, “I’m going to get you out of here”.

A caterpillar turns to absolute goo, gourmet bug soup, before its DNA starts to form a butterfly inside the cocoon. My transition meant I completely dissolved and shed the masks of who I was told to be. I could call it excruciating and electrifying. The transformation was happening whether the people around me liked it or not; I simply couldn’t stop it. More importantly, I didn’t want it to stop. The point being no one can stop someone once they catch a glimpse of themselves. This includes being trans and noncisgender.

People do this too despite not liking to think of themselves as turning into goo. The idea of turning into goo brings up all sorts of feelings yet it is essential to all of our transformations. It was the stigma my body had absorbed about being trans that made me struggle so deeply with mental health. One of the practices I started was how to meditate. Meditation is a practice of quieting the mind as it spins constantly scanning for threats. I wanted to escape being trans…but it was like trying to escape having to breathe or needing to eat. You just can’t.

A couple of weeks after I had shared who I am with my friends, family and work, I was laying on the office floor staring up at the Aspen trees in my backyard, breathing after an incredibly ugly cry. Asking the trees what to do next, I heard, “Follow the root.” Aspen trees have incredibly intricate root systems, connecting tree families far beneath the ground. That has translated everything in my life. Especially when I feel stuck, I return to that phrase.

The marriage & divorce to the kids’ father were the most dangerous years of my life. After Ari and I came out, I began locking myself in my bedroom with the kids at night. My ex is terrifying. Others may not see it but that’s how abuse operates. They want you to see what they want you to see. The actions of our current president remind me of his behavior toward us after we came out trans. It was like something ruthless had been unleashed in our house. Wild and reckless, vicious and fierce, he was on a hunt. His prey? Us.

I would listen to where he moved around in the house when he came home from work at night and waited for him to go to his room. We’d been in separate rooms for quite a while, having agreed divorce was on the horizon but logistics needed to be decided. The kids were little so putting them to bed early was easy.

Ari kickstarted a large part of my journey of reparenting. I needed to become the parent, the ally, the advocate she would need and one that I did not get. Later, Ari told me, “Mama, I knew I was trans because you told me what the T in LGBTQ stood for. I knew that was me.” Anyone who gets to be around Ari knows she is kind, and compassionate, has a very dry sense of humor, loves her downtime, and feels deeply connected to her family and community. She aspires to be a paleontologist, enjoys playing online games with her friends, and sees the world in a way I never will and it’s extraordinary.

Five years in Colorado family court included lawyers, therapists, psychologists, pediatricians, a child legal representative, a child and family investigator (who was also a convicted domestic abuser), and thousands of dollars standing up to her father. My wife and I paid our ransom fighting a man who called himself a trusting parent and teacher in the community. I built a team of providers and affirming professionals and placed my blind faith in a system that was not built to see and hear a family like ours but it was my only option.

And now, in January 2025, I look at this federal administration gatekeeping trans health care and think, “This ain’t my first rodeo.”

At 40, I learned the word nonbinary and my heart finally cracked open. It was an overwhelming outpouring of truth. This was when I knew something was on and everything was right again. After telling my wife I am trans, I remember raising my head through all the snot bubbles and sobs and it was her kindness that made me cry even harder. I could breathe after decades of feeling like I’d been suffocating and she just kept holding my hand.

The response after I came out was I ended up exposing every inauthentic relationship in my life. I exposed myself and started facing patterns, habits and coping mechanisms I’d carried with me from childhood. Gender is nuance in motion…it’s how we see ourselves, how we want to present, how we want to express ourselves. Gender and sex are different….vastly.

This new administration is barking up the wrong tree. It’s almost hysterical but humor gives me relief in this time of deep pain and grief. I’ve been here before. They know nothing of the LGBTQ spirit and power of our community. Why? Because we’re real. We’re honest with ourselves about who we are. We possess the ability to self-reflect which our federal administration does not.

Mirror neurons; it’s called science.