Paula Stone Williams's Blog, page 4

And Now?

I often quote the last several lines of David Whyte’s poem, Sweet Darkness. Since last week I’ve been at the front of the poem, quoting its first few lines:

When your eyes are tired the world is tired also

When your vision has gone, no part of the world can find you

Time to go into the dark, where the night has eyes to recognize its own

I’ve been lost for the last week with no map or working compass. I was blindsided in 2016 and I immediately determined to fight back. This time I’m not yet ready to fight back. I am weary. While I am greatly concerned for our democracy as a whole, much of my current weariness is self-referential, related to transgender rights.

The focused attack on transgender rights is about eight years old, with many victories celebrated by the right in state legislatures over the last three years. Almost 600 bills were introduced and 90 signed into law in 2023 alone. Now I fear there will not just be state laws, but federal laws or executive orders eliminating medical care for transgender people. The anti-trans rhetoric is on the increase and it is frightening.

Republicans made transgender rights a major issue in this campaign. Focus groups showed the anti-trans commercials that aired in swing states were more effective than others at getting out the Republican vote.

It is also concerning that the extreme left has played a part in creating such a perilous environment for transgender people. My greatest fears are for the very small percentage of children who are transgender, children no longer able to get the medical care they so desperately need. These children knew they were trans at a very early age and made it known at an early age. There was no mistaking their gender identity.

With the exception of these children, who are fairly easily identified, I question the appropriateness of medical treatment of teenagers who do not present with gender dysphoria before their teen years. An inordinate number of them were identified female at birth, and a significant number are no longer identifying as transgender once they are in their twenties. We should be looking at the data, as European nations have been doing. Many of those nations have become more cautious about providing teen medical treatment of gender dysphoria until we understand the trends.

I also understand why many feel that a transgender woman whose body developed as a male should not be playing women’s sports. Anti-androgens and estrogen do diminish one’s physical strength, but if your body developed as a male, not all sports advantages have been lost. I have felt that in my own body.

For having those opinions I have been castigated by the left, sometimes with the same level of vitriol with which I have been castigated by the right. I am nervous about publishing this post because of the power of cancel culture. Strategic essentialism and standpoint theory have created an environment that threatens freedom of speech. Just look at how easy it has become to lose your status as a tenured professor at a university, or how Jewish students are being treated on many campuses. Put that together with the newly empowered right and no wonder I do not know how to proceed. I want to be involved in the birth of something new, but I cannot find purchase. I do not see where to take the first step.

At the moment I will serve where I am comfortable, working within the church and writing about its effect on American culture. I have a sixty-five page book proposal with my agent tentatively titled, Can Religion Be Good – Creating Change and Finding Hope in a Polarized World. I’m eager to see which publishing company picks it up.

These are trying times, but life goes on. I will live with more caution, because I must. I will also live fully, because as I say so often, the call toward authenticity is sacred, and holy, and for the greater good.

And so it goes.

These Words are Important

This post is longer than usual. It is important. It will initially read rather negatively. Bear with me. It will turn the corner.

The election and all of its awfulness has left me concerned not only about the future of the nation, it has left me pondering my own life. It would seem half of the nation has done its best to fill my heart with shame. It started with pretty much an entire denomination’s instant rejection of me, with the attendant letters, emails, and texts, some of which continue to this day, more than ten years after I transitioned.

It continued with many of the 13,000 comments on my first TED Talk, comments I have never read because, well, you can’t read stuff like that and survive. And now it continues with half of the nation attacking all transgender people, questioning diagnosis, treatment, and every other aspect of a complex and perplexing experience. They are certain they know all they need to know about it.

Oh, but that any kind of certainty in all things transgender could exist. Most questions about the causes of gender dysphoria are difficult to answer. Not enough peer review studies have been completed. But that does not seem to stop people on both ends of the political spectrum from being quite certain about it. And those on the right have made it a huge issue in the presidential election.

The transgender controversy is just one example of our culture’s desperation for certainty, which is an illusion, whatever the subject. Have we learned nothing from Quantum physics?

I have a pretty healthy ego structure. For that I can thank my white male entitlement, a loving and nurturing father, a doting grandmother and an education system that was predisposed toward children who easily learn in traditional ways. I have a fair amount of ego strength, with less ego need than many.

Nevertheless, I am weary of the assaults. I am saddened by the educational institutions, corporations, and conferences that have rescinded invitations for me to speak because I am transgender. Things looked a hell of a lot better for trans folks ten years ago than they do today. If this week’s election turns out as I fear it will, it is only going to get worse.

I rarely speak with people considering transitioning. I know many would love to talk with me, but I have discovered it is not good for my soul. They are all overly optimistic about how the world will receive them in their new gender, and woefully unaware of how difficult it is going to be. I always say, “My life has gone far better post-transition than I ever could have imagined. The same is not likely for you. I am one of the lucky ones.”

I came into this gender with a lot of privilege and a very fortunate TED Talk that has garnered over seven million views, resulting in a plethora of opportunities. Even with that good fortune, the last year has been difficult as I have come to see that self-confidence not withstanding, a lot of people in the world think of me first as transgender and second as anything else. I am referred to as the transgender speaker, the transgender speaker’s coach, the transgender elected official, or the transgender pastoral counselor. I could go on but you get the idea. Previously I was the non-profit CEO, the public speaker and writer, the television host, the husband, father, and son. No other qualifiers were necessary.

This is my reality, yet I do not live in despair. Wholeness comes from within. All of these external attacks I see as anti-wholeness agents. If I could draw, which I cannot, I would picture these anti-wholeness agents as pitiful looking ogres with giant clubs and not much intellect, fierce on the outside but consumed by fear that they are somehow not enough, and if anyone looks too closely, their secret will become known.

To be clear, these ogres could some day literally kill me. I am frightened by the people who have found my phone number, which I do not share publicly, and text me with their sickening taunts. But just because they could kill me does not mean they have the power to stop me from being whole. Again, wholeness comes from within.

As a therapist, friend, partner, and parent, I think one of the most important things I can do is affirm when I can see a person’s wholeness. As a therapist, I am called upon to hold an image of a client’s wholeness when they cannot yet see it themselves. I see the wholeness of my dearest friends, their brokenness too. Sometimes I see the wholeness of those who oppose me, and though they have rejected me, it does not diminish my appreciation of their wholeness. I am thinking of two very dear lost friends as I write that last sentence.

Jungian analyst Donald Kalsched says a person brings their history with them into therapy. At the center of this history is the divine spark of the person, the God-given essential self, seeking incarnation in the world. They are asking the most holy request of you, that you be available as a witness to make the way for this divine spark to come forth. That is the sacred duty of being a therapist.

Carl Jung said the pursuit of wholeness, and its pursuit of us, is the lifelong struggle of every person. What he called individuation is the unfolding of this wholeness from within. The unfolding is sacred, holy, and for the greater good.

The psyche is called to integration and wholeness. It is the spark of the divine from within. All religions have traditionally given us the teaching or doctrine about the wholeness of the world, and have drawn us to seek our own wholeness. In today’s fragmented world the left brain and right brain never meet, and the left brain is worshipped while the more holistic right brain is ignored. (When was the last time you saw literature, music, or art receiving as much focus in our education system as science and mathematics?) Religion has been passed over at an alarmingly accelerated pace, the proverbial baby thrown out with the bathwater of fundamentalist excess. Gone are the numinous mystical experiences at the core of all major religions.

Wholeness and unity have been sacrificed in the interest of power. We must depend on literature, film, music, art, poetry, or an epiphany that comes from the beauty of the natural world to return us to our own wholeness. Of course, even that will not make us whole unless we know we are loved. But that would be a different column for a different day.

I believe this world is not random. I believe loving God and loving neighbor are my greatest responsibilities, both impossible if I cannot first love myself. I believe we are called to wholeness whatever our circumstances. Jesus knew it on the cross (Forgive them, for they know not what they do.) Galileo knew it under house arrest (by the church) for daring to insist the earth was not the center of the universe. Solzhenitsyn knew it in the gulags of the Soviet prisons, and Nelson Mandela in a prison cell in South Africa. Maya Angelou knew it in the wholeness of her Black female experience; Mary Magdalene knew at the tomb. Mary Oliver knew it in her wanderings and wonderings through nature, and Emily Dickinson in her scraps of paper saved in a cloistered room.

I do not pretend to know the causation of gender dysphoria or the genesis of my own. I do know wholeness is closer as Paula than it was as Paul. I wish that was not the case, particularly for the sake of my family, but it is what it is. That knowing is enough. As I pursue wholeness and it pursues me, brief glimpses of wisdom tell me I am on the right track, naysayers and politicians be damned.

I love the end of David Whyte’s poem, Sweet Darkness:

You must learn one thing

The world was made to be free in

You must give up all the other worlds

Except the one to which you belong

Sometimes it takes darkness

And the sweet confinement of your aloneness

To learn that anything or anyone that does not bring you alive

Is too small for you.

When Did I Get So Old?

When I was in my twenties and thirties I had two mentors. One was a generation older than me, the other was two generations older. A third, fifteen years my senior, is still living. With all three, I thought of myself as someone who might eventually achieve what these three had achieved, and maybe more. Life was nothing but possibility. (White male entitlement goes a long way.)

One of the harder things of this age is realizing when people who are smarter, better educated, and more accomplished than you are also younger than you.  I was at an event with Brian McLaren last weekend. He is prolific, brilliant, and humble. We have been on the platform together a number of times over the past few months, and one time this summer, when we were on a panel together and he couldn’t retrieve a word, I said to the audience, “I just want you to know I’m having no trouble retrieving words, and I’m five years older than Brian.” Yep, I’m five years older than Brian.

This morning I was listening to an amazing conversation between Iain McGilchrist, the British psychiatrist, philosopher, and neuroscientist, and John Vervaeke, director of the Cognitive Science program at the University of Toronto. McGilchrist is now retired, and two years younger than me. And Vervaeke, yep, younger than me. The moderator was Daniel Schmachtenberger, clearly very smart and probably younger than my children. (Am I the only one whose Wikipedia page lists my age?)

My three favorite preachers are between 47 and 55. All three could be my children. Actually, one is my child.

When did I get so old? I was talking to an American Airlines pilot today who flies 777s internationally. She has six more years to fly before she has to retire, which means I am fourteen years older than she is. If I had been an airline pilot, I would have had to retire eight years ago. I was telling her that the first commercial plane I ever flew on was a BAC1-11, followed by a YS-11 and a Convair 440. She said, “Wow,” as if to say, “I didn’t know anybody was still alive who flew on those planes.” She was five when the last Convair 440 was built. Microsoft Word doesn’t even think Convair is a word. Go ahead, type it and see.

I get calls, not texts or emails, but calls from people at my Medicare provider asking if I would like to have a nurse come to the house and do a wellness check, free of charge. They call because apparently I’m so old I cannot figure out how to use email or texts. I told the one who called last week that I had just finished an 8 mile run on a trail with 1,600 feet of elevation gain, so no, I did not need anyone to come to the house to take my blood pressure.

I meet other 73 year-olds. They look ancient. I’m not sure how you can even look that old at this age. Have these people never heard of sunscreen? Some of them look like the only place they have eaten in 25 years is Golden Corral. I’m thinking they probably do need a nurse to come because they can’t climb more than three steps at a time. Is that what other 73-year-olds think when they look at me?

It’s the really smart people whose books I read and videos I watch that bother me the most. Most of them were not alive when Truman was president. Come to think of it, most were not alive when Eisenhower was president, or Nixon. People are turning fifty this fall who were born after Nixon resigned. Geez, I’m old.

And yet these “young people” have amassed all of this information I need to know. When did they learn all this stuff? While I was vacationing at Disney World? Or when I was running around the world? (If I’ve done the calculations correctly, I’ve run around 35,000 miles in my life.)

When did I slack off? I know I did not get the best education available to man. Chalk that up to being born into a strong Evangelical family. But I have read voraciously for decades. I had mentors who had not one, but two doctorates. Yet here I am, the old person telling the audience that Brian McLaren is five years younger than me.

I thought I was doing pretty good that I have had nine books published, two as Paula, seven as Paul (plus two more if ebooks count. Do they count?)  Brian has published almost 50. What was I doing all that time he was researching and writing? Probably running at Disney World.

My doctors are all younger than I am, and I probably would not trust any of them if they were older than me. When I got my doctorate I thought, “Nobody minds if their therapist is old, as long as they don’t fall asleep during your session.” So far no one has cared about my age, nor have I fallen asleep during a session. So, at least there’s that.

I stopped telling people how old I was at corporate speaking gigs. I figured if they knew, they’d say, “Why are we paying that old person so much?”

I still have time. I could write that Pulitzer Prize winning book, or do another TED Talk that has millions of views. I’ll think about that later, I need to go running now. Yesterday I ran my last mile of a three mile run at a 9:36 pace. There was a day I ran the last mile of a three mile run at a 5:56 pace. Sigh.

And so it goes.

Religious Communities Are Here to Stay

Throughout the 20th century seventy percent of all Americans belonged to a local religious body. Between 1999 and 2021 that number dropped to forty-seven percent, a decline of twenty-three points in just twenty-two years. Some say organized religion is dying, and the four horsemen of atheism (Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens) certainly thought that was true. But proclamations about the demise of organized religion are premature, to say the least.

Charles Darwin said all natural selection evolved at the individual level and at the group level. Groups with more virtuous members survived and replaced those with more selfish members. There has never been a culture that did not have thriving religions, because religion has, on the whole, been good for the species.

E. O. Wilson, the late sociobiologist from Harvard won a Pulitzer Prize identifying that the key social unit for the human species was not the nuclear family, but the tribe. We did not take off as a species until we moved to a tribal, community level. That is when we started creating civilizations and moving rapidly forward.

What caused us to create tribes? Many assume it was the desire for safety in numbers. Evidence points elsewhere. What brought us together was man’s search for meaning. Think Stonehenge, or the carved bodies of Rapa Nui, or burial mounds of native Americans. One of the pillars of religion is addressing man’s search for meaning.

Jonathan Haidt, in his book The Righteous Mind, said humans are 90 percent chimpanzees and 10 percent bees. Humans have a selfish gene, like all other species, but we also are one of only nine species that also has a “hive” gene. (Wilson called these eusocial species.) We will sacrifice ourselves for the sake of the hive.

Haidt says humans have a hive switch that can be turned on. It is the space of the sacred, where self disappears and group interests dominate. It is a space of collective joy, love, mourning, even survival. It can be found by participating in team sports, singing in choirs, playing in marching bands, rooting for a sports team in a stadium, hallucinogens as group ritual, or joining together after a natural disaster, anything that turns on the hive switch.

Turning on the hive switch can even come via awe, a universal human experience, most often arriving when we see the expansive universe in all of its beauty. Think the first images from the JWST telescope or standing over the Grand Canyon. Anything that places us in perspective in nature moves us toward oneness with other humans.

Through history the hive switch has very commonly been turned on via religious community and its rituals. The religions that survive make groups more cohesive and cooperative. They unite members into a moral community. Such is the appeal of Jesus’s simple but not easily practiced command to love God, neighbor, and self.

We even come into the world wired for moral community. Morality in children is innate, meaning organized in advance of experience. It is self-constructed by children on the basis of their own experience with harm. At six to ten months of age, babies will choose a puppet who helps others as opposed to a puppet that hurts others. Morality also comes from childhood learning, which often takes place in religious community. Virtually all religions have rituals for children as they grow into adulthood. The loss of those rituals has hurt adolescents in the western world.

Religions also promote cooperation and trust within a group. Utopian communities in the 19th century all eventually failed, but those that were religious were seven times more likely to survive for much longer periods of time than those that were not religious.

Four out of five studies of religion (79 percent) have found that religion and well-being have a positive correlation on mental and physical health and longevity. Religious Americans are better neighbors than secular citizens. They also give seven percent of their income to all charities (not just religious ones) while secular people give only one and a half percent. It is not keeping rules and regulations that causes this kind of altruism. It is being in community with others of like mind.

There are broad benefits to organized religion. As mentioned, it is the place in which we search for meaning together. In spite of rugged American individualism, our species has always thrived when we work in community to search for meaning.

Jonathan Haidt says humans do change our minds, but not unless information comes to us in a non-threatening way. Religious communities provide a safe place in which to hear new and challenging ideas. They can create a secure environment in which we will be open to change, if encouraged to do so. Unfortunately, they can also be a place that creates hardening of the categories when a “protect the gates” mentality emerges.

In a polarized environment, the best way in which to truly see and hear those unlike you is via proximity and narrative. I speak at educational institutions all over the world, and am paid handsomely to do so. I go to Christian universities pro bono, because I know if I can get in close proximity to those students, and they can hear my story, their tendency to classify me as “other” is greatly diminished. They realize I’m normal, or at least as normal or abnormal as they are.

Religious communities are where we learn to be human together. They are messy, and they are supposed to be messy, because it is where we learn to work through conflict, our shared humanity, and our search for meaning through the various boundary conditions of life.

Religious communities also historically have done amazing amounts of social good in the world. They provide more than one half of food programs and one quarter of housing programs in the United States. Fifty-seven percent of faith based organizations participate in health programs. Working together in religious community, the total is greater than the sum of the parts.

It is also good to remember that fifty-two percent of Christians are supportive of marriage equality. We hear from the vocal minority that is not supportive, but ignore the majority that is supportive.

Religious communities have always been with us, and always will be with us. They change forms, with those surviving having more virtuous members and those dying having more selfish members, but religious communities are baked into the DNA of the species. And that is a good thing.

And so it goes.

Will and Harper

Everyone kept asking if I’d seen Will and Harper. I mean, geez, it came out five minutes ago. Besides, I’m tired of television shows, movies, and books focused on the first year in the life of a person who has transitioned. Where you are at year one is so different from year 10, but nobody wants to put the spotlight on that. It’s not dramatic enough.

Nevertheless, when the recommendations turned into a cacophony of voices including one of my closest friends, I figured it was time to watch it. And sure enough, it does have all the elements of that “early transition” period. They also do not devote enough time to Harper’s family or even acknowledge Harper’s ex-wife, but I’ll write about that some other time. On the whole, however, the movie is wonderful and it affected me greatly. I had to pause it eight or nine times to cry. It’s been a while since anything about transitioning has made me cry.

The way in which Harper’s SNL co-workers responded was exceptionally moving. They were all so supportive and accepting, and  Will Ferrell was amazing. No, he wasn’t perfect and did stuff wrong, but that’s part of the point. At least he tried. Every time an SNL actor was in the documentary, I wept. I’m not sure why, but the brief section with Will Forte made me cry so hard I could not catch my breath.

I know I have never really dealt with how awful it was to lose most of my friends and all of my coworkers when I transitioned. I have not talked with the vast majority of them since the day I came out, over ten years ago. They were well-known leaders, Christian leaders. Yet to them, I may as well be dead. The contrast between the loving reaction of comedians and the devastating reaction of pastors was jarring, troubling, and just plain sad.

What it would have meant if a couple of my friends, and they know who they are, had chosen to stand up publicly for me, and go on a road trip with me, and support me in my transition? It could have changed so much. They had a chance to shift the narrative about what it means to be trans, and they rejected that chance. Instead, they chose to never speak to me again. And thereby they showed me, and every person I know, the fruit of evangelical Christianity. Not compassionate love, but strident judgment.

I always give my former friends and co-workers the benefit of the doubt. A handful have remained in touch with me, and are privately supportive, if not publicly. But Will and Harper showed me, viscerally, what real love looks like, and I wept.

I received that kind of love from Cathy, Jonathan, Jubi, Jael, Kijana, Jana, my grandchildren, and my closest friend, David. But outside of those people and one or two others, crickets. It was devastating to be completely rejected by all of my friends and colleagues. The contrast for Harper with her co-workers at SNL could not have been more striking.

Another thing that struck me about the movie was how fortunate I am that the world receives me as a woman. In the language used by most transgender people, I pass, meaning I pass in public as a woman. In today’s world in which there is so much misinformation about what it means to be transgender, those who do not pass in their new gender are subject to incredibly mean-spirited comments and behavior. I have experienced that exactly once in ten years. That one time was devastating. The personal was very mentally ill, and I was not safe.

On the whole however, being trans has not affected my success in life. In fact I have had more outlets and opportunities to use my gifts as Paula than I had as Paul. I’ve done three TED Talks that have had millions of views, published a best-selling memoir, spoken all over the world on issues related to gender equity, and been elected to public office. When I speak with those considering transition (which is rare – I receive far more requests than I can accommodate) I tell them their experience is not likely to be as positive as mine. I have been fortunate and I am acutely aware of that good fortune.

There is a downside to passing in your new gender. Those who knew Paul cannot find Paul in Paula. They say I look nothing like Paul, and they tend to see me as a completely different person than the one they knew. There is continuity with Harper between the way she looked before and her appearance now.

Harper’s pre-transition experience was very similar to my own experience. As a long time head writer for SNL, she had become very successful. Because of that success, she was terrified of being found out. I know that terror. It is awful.

Also similar, try as she might, she could not understand the genesis of her gender dysphoria. It was just there from childhood, that’s all. Is it brain chemistry, genetics, prenatal abnormalities, environmental? No one knows, and who knows if we will ever know. The political environment does not encourage studies that might shed light on the causes of gender dysphoria.

What was most strikingly similar was the abject despair into which Harper descended before she finally transitioned. I sometimes forget just how bad it got, and how hopeless I felt.

I have one other specific comment that is important. Harper talks about her “dead name.” A lot of trans people talk about their dead name. Paul is not my dead name. It was my name. When you are referring to my life during those years, it is fine to refer to me as Paul and he. I refer to myself as Paul and he. For me, the notion of a dead name does absolutely nothing to create continuity in my life. It is already difficult enough to maintain any kind of continuity without exacerbating the problem by talking about a dead name. But as I have said many times, when you have talked to one transgender person, you’ve talked to one transgender person. My feelings about dead naming are different from most of the trans people I know.

Do I recommend Will and Harper? Yes, unequivocally! While her experience post-transition is quite different from mine, the movie is a very positive expression of the transgender experience, and more importantly, of enduring long-term friendship. This is a movie about the abiding nature of love, and it is a wonderful celebration of life.

Seven Lessons

I have fished once in my adult life. It was the late 80s and we were on vacation in the boundary waters of the Thousand Islands, downstream from Kingston, Ontario. We were fishing the St. Lawrence River for northern pike, a feisty fish that fights like the devil when you try to get it above the surface. Once caught, it’s not a particularly good fish to eat because getting the bones out is nigh on impossible.

I think about that trip often because of how much that experience reflects my life. What exists beneath the surface wants to stay beneath the surface. It’ll fight like the devil to stay there, and if you finally reel it in, what you’ve caught is hard to swallow.

It is always interesting to me when people quit therapy before they really begin. I usually can tell it is coming. They have hooked a fish in the depths, and they have no interest in reeling it in. Sometimes they do not have the energy. They know dealing with the past is going to be hard work, and they cannot bring themselves to do it. Occasionally, they just aren’t ready to deal with it. Whatever the case, I am always disappointed. With a qualified guide, you can reel the fish in, no matter how hard it fights.

What we refuse to deal with eventually deals with us. My mother broke her ankle and refused to rehabilitate. It was exasperating to her doctor and physical therapist. Ankle breaks are often hard to heal, but it was an ordinary break, not one that required surgery. Still, she refused physical therapy. She said it was too hard and painful. She did not walk, and rarely got out of bed, for the last ten years of her life. It probably shortened my mother’s life and definitely negatively affected her quality of life, but for reasons I will never know, because they remained beneath the surface, it was easier for her to be non-ambulatory than it was to rise up and walk.

It reminds me of John 5:6 in the gospels when Jesus asked the man at the pool at Bethesda if he wanted to get well. For some people, it is just too hard to get well. It is tragic, but you have to respect their freedom to choose.

Generational trauma results from the accumulated layers of trauma that have not been brought to the surface, confronted, and healed. When I first started therapy in 1993, my therapist said, “You are breaking patterns that have been there for decades, if not centuries.” I thought she was being dramatic. She was not. I fought with a lot of northern pike beneath the boundary waters. Occasionally I still go back to therapy because I realize I need to go fishing again.

What have I gained from all of that fishing? Wisdom, compassion, empathy, knowledge, understanding – those for sure. Given those positive lessons, you’d think I’d be free of the effects of trauma by now.  I can point you to people who would say I am as messed up as I ever was. They might be right. I can still be self-serving, blind to injustice, and inclined to speak too quickly when it would be better to keep my mouth shut. There is always work to do.

Here are a few gems I have gained from my fishing expeditions:

“I can’t do that!” are usually words spoken when we are navigating from a childhood map, back when we actually could not do a lot of things because the powers that be stopped us from doing them. It is more accurate to say, “I won’t do that.” That forces us to acknowledge the empowered decision we have made to not do something. To say “I won’t” instead of “I can’t” is empowering. It is owning your decision. No one else made it for you. It was yours.When someone says, “I’m just joking” they are never just joking. Just as the blush betrays the secret wish, the quick jab that necessitates a deflective, “I’m just joking,” has been just beneath the surface for a long time, ready to strike when one’s guard is down.Some fears will always be with you. No one likes being humiliated or shamed. For me, it will always take me back to a very early wound that has never quite scarred over. I wrote about it in my book. No need to repeat it here.Sometimes all you get is a decision between two evils, and you must choose the lesser of the two. I never wanted to transition. Transitioning was better than dying. My wife and my best friend thought I was headed in that direction. They might be right. Gender dysphoria is a difficult diagnosis. I would not wish it on my worst enemy. And in today’s America, it is harder to navigate than it was even ten years ago. It turns out that the general public having no information about what it means to be transgender is better than having the wrong information.Your problem is usually not the thing you fear. It is that which gave birth to the thing you fear. Beowulf’s problem was not so much Grendel as it was the mother of Grendel. For almost all of us, that which gave birth to the thing we fear is a conviction there is something inherent about us that makes us unworthy of deep human connection. We began life with a 360 degree perspective. Those who raised us quickly let us know that 345 degrees of that were not acceptable. We learned to live within the 15 degrees that was acceptable, but from that day forward we were pretty sure our desire for the other 345 made us unworthy of unconditional love.If you were raised as an evangelical Christian, the majority of #5 was centered around your gender and sexuality. Most of what you were told is wrong. This keeps therapists in business.You are more capable than you believe you are. One single negative comment can undo the good of fifty positive comments. To understand the reason for that, see #5 above. Find a person who truly sees you, sees what you are capable of, and relentlessly encourages you in that direction.

I’ve learned a lot of other lessons in my seven decades on the planet. I’ll share some others another time.

And so it goes.

Discerning a Call

I walked this meandering path in the early morning mist in the Grand Tetons. I did not know where the path went. I followed it because with each step it became more beautiful. Alas, I had to turn around because I had run out of time.

You never finish answering a call because the demands of the call are many, unrelenting, and ever changing.  And eventually, you run out of time. Joseph Campbell talked about following your bliss, but I’d like to ask him to explain just a bit more about what exactly bliss means. As it relates to work, I’ve always said it means moving in the direction of your gifts. But in life in general, it seems a call can be far more difficult to discern.

When I decided to transition, it was after seventeen years of therapy and two bouts of moderate depression. (As I’ve written before, moderate depression is like moderate turbulence on an airplane. It is a lot worse than it sounds.) Some who transition say either they transitioned or they would have died. I am not sure that is true for me. I certainly have friends and family who believe that is true for me. I believe I might have stayed alive, but at great cost.

As I have written often, including in my memoir, my call to transition came during a television show. It was the final season of Lost and there came a point during that season in which Jack, the protagonist of the show, realized he had been called by the God figure (Jacob) to die. (If you are a Lost fan, it is the episode in which he saw his childhood home in the lighthouse mirror.) I knew I had been called, and cried until dawn. Most of the time a call is not received as an, “Oh Joy!” moment. It is received as an, “Oh Shit!” moment.

That call came early in 2010. Almost fifteen years later, my call keeps shifting, like the early morning light. When I first transitioned, few knew what it meant to be transgender and gender dysphoria was not even a diagnosis in the DSM. Today, thanks to the far right and Donald Trump, transgender people in America are under siege in ways I never could have imagined ten years ago. When my first TED Talk took off in 2017, outside of the evangelical world most of what I received was good will – worldwide. Not so today. I have lost at least three high-paying university or corporate speaking gigs this year because the powers that be said, “No transgender speakers on my watch!”

I am fortunate to live in a very accepting town in which I serve as an elected official (Mayor Pro Tem and Board of Trustee member,) one of fewer than 50 elected transgender officials in the United States.

Outside of Colorado, and particularly when I am in neighboring states, or when I am in the south, if people find out I am transgender I do not feel safe. Unless my speaking gig requires it, I never out myself in those states. I do not feel called to be an activist for the transgender community. I do not avoid speaking out on trans issues, but I feel far more called to speak on gender equity.

Sometimes I find a calling emerges by trusting the flow of my life. My counseling practice has picked up again, primarily with two groups, CEOs and other c-suite individuals, and with those exiting evangelicalism with all of the accompanying complexities of religious trauma. My practice is growing in both areas. The other realm that has arrived by complete surprise has been coaching speakers. I currently have a dozen speaker coaching clients, most of whom have come because of my work at TEDxMileHigh or my TED Talks. (If you are interesting in counseling or coaching with me, reach out to me at paula@rltpathways.com)

Each of these areas of endeavor lines up with the oft-quoted phrase from Frederick Buechner that where you are called is “where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep hunger.”

There is a deep gladness in counseling leaders who know the loneliness of leadership every CEO experiences. With a quarter of a century of experience as a CEO, I come to that work with lived wisdom and painfully earned knowledge.

Working with people who have experienced toxic faith is gratifying because of my extensive knowledge in the area, and again, because of my own personal experience. Enough time has passed with both that I have few issues with counter-transference, the problem that occurs when a counselor does not have enough distance between their own painful issues and a current client’s similar issues. (It is also a reason I do not counsel transgender people – too much counter-transference.)

I have also been called to an ever-changing understanding of what it means to be transgender. I now use language I rarely used when I first transitioned. I feel I come from the borderlands between genders, or the liminal space between genders. I do not experience life as a cisgender woman, but there are so many ways in which a cisgender male experience felt so very wrong. The best explanation I currently have is that I am far more comfortable living as a female than I was living as a male. For those who have over a decade of lived transgender experience, that is something I hear often.

I have a lot of questions and concerns about the meteoric rise in the number of young people who identify as transgender. What was consistently a diagnosis of about one half of one percent of the population is now often up to five percent. Unfortunately, that is also accompanied by a large increase in the numbers of those detransitioning. I’m carefully following the studies being conducted of this phenomenon in Europe. It is too much of a politically charged issue here in the United States for truly objective studies to be completed and published. There are extreme reactions from the right and the left.

I received an extremely positive response when I shared these concerns with a large group of therapists, pediatricians, and psychiatrists at UCLA. I received the opposite response when I shared them with a mainline Protestant church in the same region. That’ll leave you scratching your head.

I shall be discerning the call of my life for as long as I breathe. One of my mentors said when he was approaching 97, “I am called to the final conversion, to leaving my ego behind and following my soul to the other side.” He had spent his life as a Christian leader. Both of my long-term mentors were Christian leaders, one Catholic and one from my former denomination. Both had passed on before I transitioned. Both would have been supportive of my transition, of that I am sure.

Discerning a call is a learned skill. Sometimes it arrives via a still small voice, and sometimes via a hard virtual smack up the side of the head. Either way one is grateful, because at least for the moment, you know where to step next.

And so it goes.

Deep Gladness Meets Deep Hunger

 

The call toward authenticity is sacred and holy and for the greater good.

Those words grace the dedication page of my memoir. They are also the last words I wrote for my 2017 TED Talk that has had over 7 million views. I chose the words carefully. No one is authentic. We are called toward authenticity and it is quite a journey. We are always in pursuit of it. We never arrive. All manner of distractions get in the way.

I try to live wholeheartedly, but I have tended to struggle with dysthymia (low grade depression) throughout my life, which can make wholehearted living difficult. I always strive toward authenticity, regardless of my mood. The desire for authenticity has brought me to this place in the year of our Lord 2024. I do not pretend to know where that call will take me next. It has not been made clear. It rarely is. You catch a glimpse of something in the mist and move in that direction. That’s all you can hope for.

Self-knowledge is holy, and the search for it is sacred. Throughout my life I have sought self-knowledge through various means, conventional and unconventional. Traditional depth therapy, with Jungian and Freudian flavors; writing, whether it be the journal I kept for 18 months after going through a difficult time, or these posts, or my memoir, or any of the other books I have authored.

Music has always been a part of the search. For someone who makes a living with words, it is ironic that I pay little attention to the words of songs. With a few exceptions, like Handel’s Messiah, or Hy Zarat’s Unchained Melody, or most of Billy Joel’s ballads, I don’t pay much attention to the words. For me it is all about the melody and especially the harmonies. I believe the most compelling argument for the Trinity is the existence of three-part harmony. God dwells there, in all of God’s parts.

Whether it is what Maslow called “peak experience” or the church fathers called “mystical experience,” we are all called beneath the ego and its incessant demands for power and safety. We are called to the realm of the soul where the deepest self-knowledge lies and we are most alive. We usually have to get there through a side door. The ego guards the front and back doors. You have to sneak past the ego to get to the soul.

For children, the soul comes forth through play. When I was a kid I loved building blocks and could play with them for hours. I would build castles and forts and then I would tear them down. Tearing my creations down was a part of the play. It prepared me for all the tearing down that accompanies even the most ordinary life.

For some a calling is birthed through a recurring dream. For others, it is a conversation you randomly hear on an airplane that feels as if it was meant for you. I still remember the time in the 80s when I was on a flight from Pittsburgh to Syracuse and the woman behind me, a pastor, said to her seatmate, “God is nothing if not subtle.”

Sometimes the soul comes forth through song lyrics I cannot get out of my head. As I already said, I don’t remember the words to songs, so when a phrase or snippet of a lyric comes to mind, I pay attention.

One of the most effective ways for the soul to speak to my consciousness is through the poems I have memorized. I haven’t quoted David Wagoner’s poem Lost in a couple of years. Lately I cannot get it out of my mind. I think I know the reason, though I am still pondering.

Sometimes instructions arise from the silence of meditation. Initially you take them as interruptions, and then you blessedly realize they are actually instructions. At least that is what people tell me. I have never been able to sustain any kind of meditation. I once took a doctoral course on the spiritual disciplines and told the two professors teaching the course that I was spectacularly bad at them. They assured me I was not. At the end of the week one of the professors, a very kind-hearted soul, said, “Maybe this isn’t the path for you.”

Sometimes a movie or television show awakens me to what the spirit is trying to say. As I wrote in my memoir, the television show LOST was hugely important in my life. Halfway through the final season there was an episode in which the protagonist realizes he has been called by God to die. I wept uncontrollably because I knew I had been called to transition genders. I think often about that night.

Throughout my adult life I have asked two questions. “What is right for me?” and “Where am I willing to be led.” They are the right questions. The problem is that I sometimes refuse to listen. I like to move fast, acting as if speed itself is holy. Speed is not holy. It is just speed. If I take the time to listen, the spirit emerges.

I am not artistically inclined, but I remember the cold winter day in Akron, Ohio when I noticed that a big chunk of ice had formed beneath a dripping outdoor faucet. I got a hammer and chisel and started shaping the block of ice. I sat there for hours carefully chipping away sections of the block. I had no idea what I was making until I saw what appeared to be a nose emerge. Following that clue, I sculpted two eyes, lips, and a square jaw. When I finished, the block of ice looked a little like Frankenstein, but I was proud as a 12-year-old can be. I had found a face in a block of ice.

Sometimes a call emerges when you chisel away at the detritus. If a face was in a block of ice then maybe a call might be embedded in the frozen sea that develops within me. I must find a hammer and chisel so I can get to work.

I’ve given a lot of speeches over the years, and on hundreds of occasions I have quoted Frederick Buechner’s words from his book Wishful Thinking: “God calls you to the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” On scores of occasions people have thanked me for giving them that framework to understanding calling.

If you answer the kind of call Buechner identified, you will also be answering the call toward authenticity, and all of that is sacred and holy and for the greater good.

The Soul Lives Contented

My life is marked by discontinuity. There is a very clear break between once before a time and once upon a time. Once upon a time began just ten years ago. Everything from  once before a time is difficult if not impossible to revisit.

I spoke for the End Well Conference a couple of years ago. I had been asked to speak because of a piece I had written entitled, “Dying Before Dying.” I talked about how little access I have to any part of my former life. Thousands of people I knew no longer have anything to do with me. Many had been friends for decades. Outside of my family, there are few with whom I can reminisce about old times.

This past weekend I had a very short period of time in which to visit my hometown. I had hoped to stay the better part of a day and visit with a friend or two, but as it turned out, all I had was an hour. That hour packed an emotional punch.

I spent the hour at the cemetery in which my parents and seven other relatives are buried. I walked from grave to grave, reading headstones and remembering everyone’s birthday, duly etched in stone. Occasionally I stopped and stared into the distance at the foothills of the Bluegrass State.

I took a picture of the oak tree that remains on the property where my grandparents lived, just south of the cemetery. It is the only thing remaining of their house, barn, chicken coop, and outbuildings. Where my grandmother’s lush garden once soaked up the sun there is now a manicured lawn, turning brown in the August heat.

Not fifty yards away I took a picture of another tree that is in the background of the cover of the first album my vocal band ever recorded. Our tenor climbed into its branches for the photo. It was 1970. That branch would require a long ladder to reach today.

A few feet west of the tree was the small gravestone of a child who was born about six months before me and died one day after she was born. There is a lamb carved into the headstone. When I was a young child, I was very intrigued by that lamb. Today, you can barely read the name. Even etched in stone, all things eventually fade from view.

When I was a small child my grandmother would bring us into the cemetery for a picnic and to play in the cool grass. I wrote about those picnics in my first book, Laughter, Tears and In-Between – Soulful Stories for the Journey.

After my brief visit I drove back through the verdant hills of northeast Kentucky to the Cincinnati area where I indulged myself in one of my favorite acquired tastes, a “large three-way dry” order of Skyline Chili, with extra oyster crackers. Then I was back to the hotel for a zoom conversation with a young woman I recently met and greatly respect. That conversation brought to mind my favorite quote from the novels of Wendell Berry. The quote is from Jayber Crow.

Jayber is a student at a Bible college that sounds suspiciously like the one across the street from the cemetery where my parents are buried. Jayber seeks out an older professor he trusts and asks questions about God. The professor says, “You have been given questions for which you cannot be given the answers. You will have to live into them a little at a time. I will tell you a secret. It may take your entire life. I will tell you another secret. It may take longer.”

Eternity is not in the future. It is outside of time and space. It is the place where the unanswerable questions are answered, if there are answers. Sometimes when I return to the warm, humid evenings of Eastern Kentucky, it seems as though no time has passed at all. I can hear my mother and aunts laughing in Grandma’s living room as I lie by the bedroom window, listening to cicadas, trying to fall asleep.

Late Sunday evening, after dinner, I ran three miles by the light of the moon, something you cannot do in the foothills of Colorado, lest you end up a late night snack for a mountain lion. Just yesterday a mother lion and her offspring strolled through my next door neighbor’s yard. They posted a picture online. As I ran in lazy circles through the Kentucky neighborhood, I felt so calm, back in the nest of my youth.

Monday I saw a former co-worker, a very good friend. We have the kind of friendship in which years can pass, yet we pick up where we left off. Of late, for vastly different reasons, life has not been easy for either of us. He still exudes gentleness with his wide smile and kind eyes. He also wears his heart on his sleeve, as he always has. Me too. We hadn’t seen each other in years and I realized just how much I’ve missed him. For well over a decade we served a venerable institution. I believe we served it well, balancing each other thoughtfully and graciously.

After our long lunch I had a couple of hours to wander downtown Cincinnati before I met for dinner with a remarkable man I’ve known for over thirty years. He is a Renaissance person, gifted in so many ways. He is one of the best public speakers I know. He knows what the young woman I spoke with the night before and my former co-worker know, that we all have been given questions for which we cannot be given the answers. We will have to live into them a little at a time.

Now I am on a plane on my way home. I am thinking of one of my friends in my hometown who has never lived anywhere else. She knows the wisdom of one place. As for me and my peripatetic life, I know the wisdom of one airline. The captain said before we departed, “It’s 90 degrees in Denver now, but who knows, it’ll probably be snowing by the time we arrive.” The pilot knows Colorado. They will prepare for landing early because of expected turbulence as they fly into DEN. I know the drill. It happens every flight.

I type as my seatmate watches a movie on his phone. One of David Whyte’s poems is coming to mind. It begins with the words, “The soul lives contented while listening…” My soul listened carefully this weekend. It is contented.

And so it goes.

Casts Out Fear

One of my friends serves as a counselor at a private rehab center in Colorado. Just last week one of her clients said a friend had sent him a sermon from a church in Denver that talked about the importance of parents giving their children a blessing, something the client had never received. He said to the counselor, “I thought what the woman said was pretty good stuff, though she was transgender.” He gave the sermon link to another client who said he was looking for a church. He told the therapist that the sermon was okay, but that wasn’t the church for him. It was too progressive. They had a transgender pastor speaking.

I rarely get to receive that kind of feedback. Painful though it is, it reminds me of how much my privilege and white male entitlement affect my outlook on life. It rarely occurs to me that people might not listen to one of my talks, or be a part of something of which I am a part, simply because I am transgender.

Another friend sent correspondence from a mutual friend of ours indicating the grief that person had received for posting a picture with Michael Smith and me, two former leaders of non-profit ministries in the Restoration Movement of churches. We were all together at the Wild Goose Festival. Michael is one of the most character-filled and Christlike people I know. Those giving the person grief wanted the post removed, and apparently replaced with information related to what they perceive to be the shortcomings of Michael and me, though that part was not all that clear.

Thankfully, the friend’s boss backed up my friend and refused to ask his employee to remove the post. I know the courage it took for his boss to do that, someone I’ve always respected, and now respect even more.

I forget just how frightened that world can be. I also forget just how powerful it is. I forget that a wonderful Christian man could be in trouble just for spending time with two of us who are no longer a part of his denomination, and are viewed negatively by many, if not most, within that denomination.

I was completely ostracized by that world ten years ago, and fewer than a score have reached out to encourage me or renew connections since that time. I am grateful for the reconnection at Wild Goose, and for the mutual friend who brought the four of us together.

Of the 592 anti-transgender laws introduced in state legislatures, and the 90 passed into law in 22 states, most were not driven by Republicans per se. Sixty percent of Republicans feel transgender people should have the same civil rights as everyone else. Those laws were driven by evangelicals, 87 percent of whom believe gender is immutably determined at birth, 67 percent of whom believe we already give too many civil rights to transgender people, yet only 31 percent of whom know someone who is out as transgender.

I wonder how many of those people would say I am the person they know who is out as transgender? To be clear, they do know me. I am the same follower of Christ I was before, with the same character, integrity, and heart. It is sad that most of them do not see it that way.

Last month at the Wild Goose Festival, Mitchell Gold, the furniture magnate, recorded several of us who were from an evangelical background. We all spoke about the importance of not electing Donald Trump to another four years in the White House. He, and we, are all disappointed that the evangelical world has so fully backed Trump, and how negative that has been for the entire LGBTQ+ population. Those recordings will be released nationwide this month. I will post a link on my Facebook account.

As sad as the loss of so many friends from my former denomination, I am greatly encouraged at the support I see building among Christians for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Last week, on the day she announced her VP choice, I spoke for a Harris campaign event for LGBTQ+ folks. This week I spoke for the inaugural event of Christians for Kamala. Over 4,000 people watched the online rally live, and as of this writing, ten times more have viewed it since the event. Here is the link, if you’re interested.

Immediately after I finished speaking, I heard from several people who had watched it live. Over the last two days I’ve heard from several more. I went back and looked at audience comments during the rally, and it was encouraging to see how many people were grateful that there are Christians in America, thousands of them, and likely millions, who feel like they feel. Many had felt alone in their opposition to the anti-Christian rhetoric of Donald Trump and J.D. Vance.

I will be very active during this campaign. Not only is the safety of transgender people at stake. Our democracy is at stake. It is beyond me how evangelicalism can have fallen so far into the trap of MAGA extremism. Fear is a powerful emotion, and sadly, many of these people have a faith and world outlook that is profoundly fear based.

Fear is not the foundation of Christianity. Loving God, neighbor, and self is. Until we return to that foundational truth, evangelicalism will be lost. These friends from my past seem to be terrified of entering the swamplands of the soul. The truth is that the swamplands of the soul is where love is, grounding and firm. But you cannot discover that love if you refuse to face your fears and go into the swamplands. An entire movement of Christians is chained to fear, which is a more terrifying place to abide than any swamplands.

In the swamplands you are forced to examine your prejudices, your own shortcomings, and the truth that much of the time, evil is not out there, it is in here. Only when you can see the shadows in your own heart can you be open to finding the firm footing that is always available in the swamplands of the soul. My life is no longer fear-based, and that is what gives me the strength to withstand all the vitriol I receive.

I had to delete messages on social media today related to my words at the rally. I’m sure it will continue. It goes with the territory. Seems like the Apostle John might have said something about love casting out fear. I always did like John. I doubt I’ll live into my 90s in exile on Patmos like he did, but living in exile from my old world has proven to be more life-affirming than I would have expected.

And so it goes.