Living My Truth

I spent my summer vacation abandoning my gender nonconformity for a moment and then bringing it back. I had plenty of support from my colleagues, Toastmasters, as well as family. I still don’t have my confidence up 100%, but I’m getting there.

Beauty is about loving yourself, not caring about what others think.

Everyone who knows me knows 2021 was my year of turning 40. It was also my year of gender nonconformity, and it was something that came to light a few years ago but I’ve also struggled for years to keep it a secret. I was praised for living my truth, but I also faced criticism and was fed with fear about “living my truth”.

I temporarily abandoned my gender nonconformity because I wasn’t sure I was making an impact, plus I thought that I was distancing myself from my family. Even though a majority of the Gaffron family was loving my story. I also wanted to back to church, at the time, and felt I should have started clean.

The silence didn’t last long, however.

My fellow District 13 Toastmasters told me they stood by my gender nonconformity and loved seeing me with my Coach purse (I have many). I showed that off plus my outfit at summer TLI. But, what broke the silence was when I broke down to my cousin at the Gaffron farm at the Fourth of July picnic.

I told her everything. Especially how I was ostracized for “living my truth”. My cousin and I both had a good cry (I don’t care if this too embarrassing to post) as I broke down to her. She provided me with kind words and told me how beautiful I was and to keep being me. Her husband provided us with tissues and it felt good to have someone to talk to. It seems as if most of my family is supportive of my decision to “live my truth” as well as shown by the emotional support I was given at the farm that day.

At work, I feel like I have a couple of colleagues standing with me as well. It’s hard to talk about and to think of how those people made me feel last fall about being me. But my coworkers lent their ears to hear what I had to say and were proud of me for living my truth. Don introduced me to Queer Eye and asked me about Jonathan Van Ness (one of the stars of the Netflix series who is non binary and wears women’s clothes). I’ll talk about Queer Eye in a future blog.

After abandoning what I love to please just a few people, I came right back to my truth and have no plans to abandon it now. Watch out world.