An Inspired Gender Journey

Toma
3 min readJan 1, 2022

Part 1 of ?: How life can evolve in unimaginable ways

Illustration by my son… Daniel

What I’m sharing here is solely based on my current understanding and is only my opinion based on personal experience. I respect that each person’s gender journey is unique and that there are many – sometimes opposing – opinions.

When we are born our gender is assigned based on our physical attributes and we are conditioned by our environment and experiences. I understood that I was a boy and believed I was to become a man. There was no other option. Anything outside of that was shameful and outright wrong.

Diligently I tried to prove my masculinity to myself and others, but it never seemed to work out. In fact, unknown to me at the time, it became an obsession. In short my close-minded thinking and egocentric behaviours drove me into addiction, which in turn fortunately led me to recovery.

I learned about and began practicing open-mindedness, embracing my feelings, seeking the guidance of my intuition, and then acting with courage. Sometimes the things that I was most uncomfortable with became the things that I most needed to do to get the results I wanted/needed.

Then, I came to realize what I’d unwittingly suppressed all my life – that I’m gender diverse. I had inadvertently found a…

--

--

Toma

Curating the garden of my being 🌈 Reading and writing are part of that process to me.