The society we live in often seems to have very clear answers about who we should be and how we should move in the world. In many ways, the most fundamental dimensions of these are the expectations about who we should love, and what it means to be the gender we’ve been assigned at birth. For people who fit that template, who are content with their birth gender and find themselves exclusively attracted to the “opposite” sex, there is a roadmap to development, a starting point and some sense of the journey. Both spoken and unspoken, in books, media, family and culture, the path is made clear – and you’re travelling it with lots of other people beside you going through the same things.
However, when those guidelines don’t seem to fit, you can feel confused and overwhelmed by all the things that just don’t feel quite right. You try to follow the rules, meet the expectations and be like everybody else, but it never seems to go the way you planned. It always seems like you’re not interested in the right things, or the right people. Maybe you don’t quite see what other people think is so great about sex or romantic relationships, or perhaps your own body doesn’t feel right to you. If you’ve told anyone about the things that seem wrong, they might have reassured you that you’d grow out of that awkward phase – except you don’t. No one seems to get it and you feel isolated and alone.
If you believe the negative things you hear about LGBTQ folks, you may think that wanting your outside body match your inside one makes you crazy or sick. Or that being attracted to someone whose gender makes them seem like an inappropriate partner to others (and maybe even to you!) means that you’re a bad person, or that your love is shameful. You may feel especially lost if the answers inside you keep changing and you can’t seem to get a clear fix on who you really are, where you belong, or what you need in order to be okay. Even if you think you know, you may hide, even from yourself, because the answers feel too frightening to face.
I can help you to create a space of acceptance for yourself, where all the contradictions can come together in safety. We can look at all the messages you’ve received about gender and relationships from your family and culture, all the things that make you worried or confused about your identity, and work to discover what feels most authentic for you. We can look at how prejudice affects you, inside and out, so that you can heal the hurts and make peace with who you are.
There will be a path that feels right for you, and you don’t have to find it alone.
