Gender free-fall

Hey there,

Last time I wrote to you, I told you that my business was changing. Name, focus, and all. I made a small little announcement at the top of that newsletter, saying I was going by Madhu, no last name, they/them pronouns now. Well this letter is mostly about that small little announcement.

In the last few months, my mind and my body have been revealing to me, in flashes, the ways in which I don't feel at home in my body. How I feel distance when I look at myself, in the mirror, in photos. How when I look at myself, I don't see myself. Not entirely.

This is not the first time I've felt this way. Some years ago, when I figured out I was queer, I left my marriage, I was in the deep throws of depression and disassociation. I had just met my now partner. I was experiencing trauma flashbacks and panic attacks on the regular. I couldn't trust that I was okay in the moment, my past was taking over. In the middle of this period, during a low couple of days, my mind convinced me I was in the wrong body. I kept looking at my hands and they looked like my fathers'. I told my partner, I think I'm trans. When I came out of the low, I couldn't fathom how to make space for a realization so huge while dealing with so much already, but I also stepped into a gender non conforming life.

I wore loose clothes, I played with cutting my hair short. My body developed skin sensitivities. I wore even boxier clothes. I became an amorphous genderless blob.

Until recently, when my masculine self came knocking again. I kept staring at myself in the mirror. I was confused, but things were clearer than they have ever been.

This time, I felt ready. I am surrounded by queer and trans people living their truth, emboldening me through their very existence. I started to embrace my masculine self. I cut my hair even shorter. I acquired men's clothing, bit by bit. The more I stepped into myself, the easier everything got. I was accessing a part of me, a source of strength and creativity and joy that has been lost to me for so long.

I've decided to go further and explore medical transition. Am I non binary, trans masculine, or a trans man? I honestly have no idea.

Sometimes, transition feels like free-fall. Like everything is changing. My own self concept, my relationship to my self, my chronic illness, my career, my art. It feels like sifting through my entire history and person-hood to see which parts were really about performing womanhood so I'd belong, and which parts are "truly me". Which parts I can set free, which parts I need to nourish and bring forth into the world. It's daunting.

Plus there is always a voice in my head doubting, I've been in this body and life for so long, how can it be that I want to change something as fundamental as my gender only now, 32 years into my existence?

Transition is teaching me, more than anything else, how it's impossible to be certain in embodying a humongous change in one fell swoop. Taking it one day at a time, in the smallest possible increments, is a necessity to allow my body and brain to adapt to these new conditions of my existence. So often, I am anxious or nervous because I have no assurance of the end state, in transition and in leaps I take in life, like choosing to leave my well paid tech job to run a business. But I'm learning that it's okay to not know, to take the tiny steps, and to soak into and enjoy the process, even when it's scary as hell.

So I wanted to tell you that I am using he and they pronouns now, and I'm searching for a new name for myself. When I figure it out, I will write to you.

Hey and if you are navigating a big change and need a sounding board, or want to hang out, send me a note, because I love hearing from you and talking to you!