Me of many: a pretty epic journey toward self-love Free

I was born and assigned female in 1983. My name is the Gaelic word for “girl,” so I have carried that identity from the time of my birth and naming. This identity has shaped the way I move and am perceived in the world, sometimes by opening access to opportunities and at other times, barring my access. It is the first known identity that I was assigned and also adopted for myself.

From a young age, I was criticized for failing to live up to and conform to the box of “girl.” I was called a “Tom boy,” “dyke,” “butch,” “lesbian” and more for the ways in which I played, looked, and dressed that did not meet the expectations of my “girl” identity. In those early years, I had little knowledge of what some of these terms meant, but it was clear by people's tone and context that they were meant to correct my behavior and cause shame to encourage—nay, demand—conformity with societal expectations of what girls were permitted to be and do. I tended to be a bit of a rule follower (a “good girl”) in most aspects, so this idea that I was wrong, or breaking the rules, when I felt I had done nothing wrong and that these rules did not make sense, was hurtful to me. In some ways it pushed me to be more defiant and to reject anything that might be considered traditionally “girly.” I hated dresses, the color pink, dolls and anything that might give an inch toward conforming to someone else's ideas about who I was or should be.

I was athletic and very involved in playing sports in our neighborhoods, and in 6th grade, our physical education class was split into “boys” and “girls,” and the boys were taught how to wrestle, and the girls did a section on gymnastics. At recess that first day, the boys were discussing and demonstrating some of the wrestling moves they were learning, and I was immediately attracted to this sport. I asked my PE teacher, an older, white-haired, white man, if I could participate in wrestling the rest of the week instead of gymnastics. He sternly informed me that girls were not allowed to wrestle. I was furious and felt largely helpless. The following year, my army father was stationed in a new location, and I started at yet another new school. My English teacher informed the class that wrestling season was starting, he was the coach, and practices were open to all interested. I approached him after class and asked if girls were allowed to wrestle here. He was taken aback and looked as if the thought had never crossed his mind. He sort of shrugged and replied with a small grin, “I don't see why not.” I was shocked and thrilled to be allowed to try something that had previously been forbidden to me. I was also awed at his response of so nonchalantly allowing me this access when it had previously been so insistently blocked to me. Thus began my life-long love of the sport of wrestling, which I competed in for nearly a decade and continue to coach now that my body is past the point of competition. Wrestling made me physically and mentally strong and opened doors to my military service. Even though I was allowed to wrestle now, I still faced many moments of discrimination and harassment from parents, coaches, and other wrestlers for daring to take up space on a wrestling mat. The adversity prepared me for the hostilities I would face as, now, a woman in the United States Army in a male-dominated space and even more hypermasculine environment of an attack helicopter pilot.

Throughout my service, many of the slurs from my childhood about my assumed sexuality were cast in my direction. I now knew about myself that I was attracted to women as well as men, but the majority of my career was spent serving under the Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) law, so this knowledge had to be buried deep to protect my career and my safety. DADT was a law that prohibited service members from being open about their sexuality (unless it was heterosexual) while also prohibiting their command from asking about sexuality. It was a political compromise that allowed LGBTQIA+ members to serve, so long as their sexuality was kept a secret. So those slurs were not only emotionally harmful now, but they could also be career enders. If I were to engage in anything other than heterosexual relationships, and my leadership found out, or it was reported to them, I would be kicked out of the military. I heard my fellow service members “joke” in front of me about how the other women they suspected of being gay “just needed the good pipe laid on them to turn them,” so I knew I was also at risk of “corrective rape.” I married a man, which offered a buffer and level of protection. I felt safer that I could pass and lower my risk, but I found out that it was not foolproof, and I was sexually harassed and assaulted on multiple occasions. Ultimately, I was raped by a peer. I now added the identity of sexual violence victim-survivor. I have sometimes felt the victim and other times like a survivor, so when I saw this term “victim-survivor,” I felt it most accurately showed my identity. Upon leaving service, I gained the identity of a veteran, not just any veteran, but a woman veteran. Women veterans are the largest growing demographic of veterans, and yet, we are called “Invisible Veterans.” There is progress toward making more services available and inclusive for women veterans in the Department of VA, but it is still excruciatingly slow and frustrating. Being overlooked in the VA hospital waiting room when they call my name and I stand up, but they look right through me as they scan the room looking for a man; being forced to attend counseling groups for PTSD with all males; or receiving no treatment, despite being a sexual assault victim-survivor attacked by men. The shock is evident on people's faces when I claim the identity of veteran. All death by a million paper cuts.

I gained a new sense of purpose as a Civil Rights and Title IX investigator for public colleges, which I saw as a way to heal myself while helping others. This was my formal introduction to Dr Kimberlé Crenshaw's (1989) work and the academic concept of intersectionality, which I had been living out but without the words and framework to understand it. I felt like a puzzle was being completed in myself with that framework to explain my experiences and the complexities of how no one identity was causing the turmoil in me, but the relationships in me between and within those identities uniquely were and are shaping my life experiences. I felt like I couldn't relate completely to others who were singly a veteran, mother, disabled, bisexual, or victim-survivor because all of those things merged in me and made me feel that others didn't quite fully understand me and what I was going through.

This was also my introduction into my own racial identity of whiteness, which I previously had not given much thought. I realized that I just assumed my experience of life, being white, was the default and was everyone's “normal” experience. Right now, as I write this and reflect on the ways in which I felt alone and that others could not fully see me as the whole of my identities or relate to me fully, I also did not understand the experiences of my peers who were not white. I began to recognize the intersections of my identities and how they had hindered or propelled me depending on whether and in what context my identities were privileged or oppressed and in which contexts. I cannot now unsee or unknow this information and perspective. This led me to want to lean in and explore who I am, all of me, unapologetically, and know myself more completely and deeply.

During my process of leaning into and learning my sexuality, I divorced. While my spouse was supportive of my self-exploration of my sexuality and what it looked like for me, it was a factor (though not the only one) in our parting ways. I began dating again for the first time in decades. The dating scene was unrecognizable and featured dating apps as the main way to engage in the dating scene. I was now free to date anyone of any gender identity or expression or sexuality. On the one hand, this was liberating and exciting, on the other fraught and nerve-wracking. I no longer had the constraints of career implications that I did in the military or the obligations of a spouse and their feelings, and I had stopped caring as much about the ways others would judge me. Society felt to me less dangerous than when I was younger, if I were now openly queer. And simultaneously, I was scared of this world that was new to me because I had very limited experience outside of heterosexual relationships and roles. I did not know the “rules” or the right language and was afraid of saying or doing the “wrong” things and being rejected from the community I identified with and wanted to be accepted by. The bulk of dating app users, with the exception of the users on the “Her” app, were straight men, a sea of heterosexual males with an occasional profile of a woman or nonbinary person. By this time in my life, I had been a student of gender and sexuality for several years and it served both as an asset toward recognizing harmful “red flags” and also as a hindrance by reducing the pool of fish: I could no longer ignore the patriarchy and misogyny that played out in the ways many of these men talked and acted with me. I recognized these were not the fish I actually wanted. And still, I felt compelled to find a balance between wanting to date and forming a relationship and determining what harmful attitudes and behaviors I was willing to accept. Trying to negotiate these conflicting feelings created a deep turmoil in me, and many days I just gave up completely and deleted all the apps and quit because I got so tired of this feeling.

After much rumination, I set myself goals that I feel I'm close to accomplishing: fully loving myself and being content, authentic, and whole. And I am determined to not tolerate harmful treatment of me anymore by anyone. I would rather thrive alone than not live my life as whole and authentic, because I have myself, and that is pretty epic—a self-love I hope to model for my children.