Going back to my old ways?

This post is the nineteenth in a series.

I did quite a bit of journaling through the time when I was coming to recognize my reality. I would like to share some of these entries with you as a window into what it means to come out. Please come back to read through the rest of the journey. If you haven’t read the first, you can click here to be redirected to that post, called Truth. From there, at the bottom of each post you can navigate to the next.

 

June 16/20
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Talking to my sister-in-law this morning, she mentioned that in all the years she’s known me, there have been years when I have not dressed in a particularly feminine way (she mentioned lumberjack shirt specifically). For the past few years I have tried to be more overtly feminine, especially in clothing. This began when I started talking regularly with my mentor. She told me specific things I should do as a woman. I think that I’ve needed this time of exploration of womanhood to come to the point I’m at now. I was just now thinking, “Am I just going back to my ‘old ways’?” What strikes me is the internal change. I used to feel frumpy and un-stylish because I felt like I was failing as a woman. What has made me feel good these past years is getting the external woman thing right more often: passing for what people expect. Now I can dress as I wish with the internal knowledge that it’s not because I’m a failure as a woman, but as truly my non-binary self. That internal shift is huge!

 

Photo by Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash