People with periods

Rain Dove's confidence is infectious...

Having it all

Quite a while back I discovered that you cannot have it all in this life. The best you can try for is some formula which gets you stability with some degree of fulfillment. 

After a successful career and raising two wonderful kids something had to give somewhere and full authenticity beckoned. I didn't listen to it and so it yelled a little louder so I would pay attention. 

Now I realize that spreading myself too thin was slowly doing me in. I keep using the phrase "being all things to all people" because it applies when you are juggling too many things. In the process you get lost and have your molecules spread out into useless fragments you cannot use.

No, you cannot have it all but you can find your center and be more than satisfied while knowing that what you thought you wanted wasn't quite right after all.

Recharging

You may have had this happen to you. You look fine when you look in the mirror except while outside navigating the world you see inside your head the person you were before you transitioned to where you are now. It doesn't matter what others see. It only matters what you do. 

It took me a while to shake this off along with the self-conciouness that comes with the bigger picture which encompasses impostor syndrome. 

One of the reasons gender variant people tend to use mirrors is to recharge a confidence which threatens to falter. You make selected pit stops to bolster a confidence that has run out of energy and needs a boost. 

After a while I realized that people were seeing me for who I really was and the confidence needed less recharging because I was never pretending to be anything other than myself.

Today mirrors are used much more sparingly.

A deeper meaning

If you think about it, life doesn't make a lot of sense. No one asks your permission but you are nevertheless thrust into a confusing world that takes much of your life to figure out. You suffer, enjoy some happiness and then time runs out except that you never know when. 

Recently I came upon some videos dealing with near death experiences which resembled each other. People are jolted into tunnels or cosmic blackness with lights in the distance. The tales all end with a newly found sense of well being and calm about knowing they will rejoin a collective consciousness that made them want to stay where they were. 

In my early thirties (right before my father fell prey to his cancer) I read a book about making sense out of suffering which was the Christian perspective of a reward as the great equalizer for lives spent here in various states of inequity. I was more conventionally devout then and yet a certain appeal remains for the idea of tying up loose ends for a life that sometimes seems devoid of order and deeper meaning.

I have left things very open while knowing we know but a tiny fraction regarding our origins or purpose and leave it at that.

Han Solo votes

 

Carte blanche

One of the most annoying things you can do to me is lump me in with a group. I have disdain for them only because people are too unique to be thrown under a banner and told what to espouse. The danger being that we buy into everything the group is selling carte blanche. 

If we want to define ourselves we need to first do so by our uniqueness and independent thinking which requires examination of our psyche as well as ideas being presented. After that we can pick and choose what makes sense using a critical eye.

I apply that approach everywhere on every topic.

Giving our identity weight

Far more important than what we call ourselves is how we live. It is our daily experience which shapes our identity and gives it meaning. It is how our definition of self is given weight. 

As I have gotten older I have let go of how the world applies labels because unsurprisingly they were often far too loose and fluid to retain their validity. 

To give significance to our identity means to embrace it and respect its gravitas within the framework of lived experience. Otherwise it is just a label with no true backing behind it.

Identity comes from the self and not from the outside world.

Alberta gender policy

Premier Danielle Smith didn't invite Tucker Carlson to Alberta to speak because she runs a progressive government. As cautious as I like to be about transgender issues, this is just another attempt at discrimination for no reason. The tiny number of athletes at non-elite levels don't warrant this action which is just used to feed meat to their base.

Alberta is our Texas so no surprise there...

Mostly for nothing

It would be elegant if we could say that all gender variance comes from the same source but we cannot because human beings are far too complex for that. 

Once you remove gender dysphoria as a source there is relaxation, sexual pleasure, desire to break social taboos, personal sense of style as well as other reasons which people use. It doesn't really matter so long as they are happy and free of distress. 

Breaking gender norms has brought many people much fear, discomfort, shame, guilt and all mostly for nothing.

Fully yourself

In general I am interested in the elements which help people become fully themselves. What is it which finally takes them over the edge or what aspects were contained in their psychology to begin with? 

I fall into the fatigue category which took me past a point of no return but it wasn't built in. I had to fight to get here once my disdain for feeling trapped took over. Of course I was fully programmed from birth to reject instinct.

Part of the answer lies in indoctrination where the looser the parenting style the more apt the child was to find their originality and dispel fear of standing out. There is also societal climate which cannot be ignored.

This morning I was talking to a young woman I know and asked her if she ever wore dresses. She told me she likes them but feared standing out in a crowd and so she dresses more to assimilate just a bit. Now in her early twenties, it makes perfect sense because our fortitude to buck the trend isn't quite fully formed. She tells me she loves being a girl and I encouraged she find the times to celebrate it.

One dimension voting

I have members of my family who think in terms of limited scope when it comes to politics. My religious sister and my brother's wife both want Trump to win based on the abortion issue alone. 

This bothers me still even as it no longer perplexes. People vote with little information and often uni-dimensionally. They will grab a single issue or even just say I don't trust Harris and hate the way she laughs. It is not intelligent voting but it works for them. 

I would then offer that if they are so Christian they should also be concerned with the party that tends to better look after the disenfranchised. Once that baby is born to a poor mother the GOP couldn't care less about its fate which is the ultimate height of hypocrisy.

I would ask them both basic questions about how US politics works and they would be stumped. Nevertheless they are very firm in their views which enrages my better informed 88 year old mother who then calls me to vent.