I Thought I was non-binary, but i’m actually not.

I spent many years online talking about my experience of being non-binary.

It was a big part of my identity, of how I saw myself.

But over this last year, I have transformed a lot, and I have realized that I am not non-binary.

I am a woman.

This realization has slowly been unraveling itself for me this last year, and it’s been a pretty tender, scary, relieving, revealing process.

And I want to share my journey of it with you.

I went through a big internal portal last year at this time.

Many things that I previously felt very connected to fell away as I sought deeper connection to my true self.

You know if you have been following me online this past year that I have been walking with the medicine of death and rebirth a ton (which is very much my kind of medicine).

I have had moments in my life like this before- big turning points; no going back kind of moments. Moments of swift change that alter the course of my path.

This is when I started questioning if non-binary was actually true for me.

I used to feel very attached to my non-binary identity, and in this momentous moment of death, change, transition in my life… I felt less attached to old ways of seeing myself and more able to see them with sober clarity.

What I found after months of internally journeying with this question of whether non-binary was truly me or not- is that it was not true.

Something I’ve been sitting with is: if I am not non-binary, if that’s not actually true for me… why did I think I was?

When I return to the moments in time where I decided to start identifying with being non-binary- I was in my early twenties, just beginning to give myself permission to explore my sexual attraction to women (hello gay awakening).

It was freeing and liberating to give myself space to have sexual and romantic relationships with people who weren’t men.

It was that feeling of like- oh I can finally breathe, now that I have validated this thing that I have kept in the shadows my entire life.

I was new to the queer community; I was in a pretty hardcore activist phase. And a lot of my friends were either already resonating with non-binary or starting to.

What I can see now that I couldn’t see then is that I chose to identify as non-binary because I wanted to belong. Not because it was my deepest truth.

I had so many wounds around not belonging. I didn’t feel like I belonged in my family growing up. There were parts of me that so badly were starving for connection and intimacy and a sense of home — and I wanted to fit in. I wanted to resonate with people.

And so I abandoned myself. (Very unconsciously).

Non-binary as an identity also matched these belonging wounds — because it allowed me to continue to “not belong” in a lot of ways too.

It was this outsider identity because it wasn’t understood or included in a lot of spaces.

Since I was in a phase of my life where I was very much in the church (or cult) of social justice (Frances Lee)… I was also carrying around this belief that I was bad for the places my social identity has privilege and wanted to do anything I could to make it right or be “good”.

Being non-binary became a way that I could have less social privilege, but more social capitol because this is how it works in toxic social justice hierarchies that play out in the church of social justice.

It was a whole freaking ego trip, lol.

It was a way I avoided taking responsibility for being a woman in so many ways.

Non-binary as an identity had an effect on me in that I was always in this state of confusion about who I was. I always felt like I didn’t really know who I was. I was this nebulous, fluid, floating thing.

This made it hard to have secure relationships because in truth, I hadn’t developed a sense of self or felt connected to myself.

This lack of sense of self perfectly matched the lack of sense of self I experienced because of traumatic events in my childhood and early adult life.

It honestly wasn’t until I started eating more and healing my relationship to food that I started to realize this way I had been seeing myself wasn’t actually true.

It was a result of a lot of other things too- like my healing journey in the Trance Medium program I am currently enrolled in, and a major relationship I ended in my life last year that initiated me into a descent into my own underworld, and a bunch of astrology transits in my chart. Everything is connected.

But learning how to truly nourish myself with food brought me into deeper relationship with my female body, and I uncovered all of this unconscious misogyny I would never have said was still there.

I resonated with non-binary because it spoke to the fluid nature I feel as a soul.

I see that as a souls, we are all genderless.

I also resonated with it because it’s true, I don’t always conform to social gender norms, and I enjoy having that freedom.

What I didn’t realize at the time was how I also resonated with non-binary because it gave me a way to avoid socially conditioned self-loathing about being a woman and having a female body.

Like so many of my insights about my journey in social justice wokism, my identity and behavior was this social performance that was fueled by my own trauma.

My life in social justice wokism was run by these wounded desires to be good, to be special, to be likeable/not be bad. They ruled my life- who I saw myself to be, who I could allow myself to be, what I could allow myself to say or express, etc.

My work with Bleeding Thunder was me creating space for non-binary people in female bodies (my experience at the time) to connect to their bodies. I don’t invalidate any of the work I did there. It was where I was at the time, and I validate that.

And what is most important to me is honesty.

Truth.

What is true vs. what is a performance.

It has started with me being honest with myself… and now you. This is why I’m sharing this with you.

To show you in real time what it’s like to walk a path of authenticity.

I also want to share this to offer space for anyone else who might have a similar story.

I know there are other people out there who have experiences like mine, even if it is not the mainstream narrative — and coming across other people who have similar experiences has been vital to me feeling courageous enough to share my own.

I have always shared my story online with this intention- to share myself honestly and to offer space to anyone else who might have a similar experience- no matter what my story has been.

I’m not sharing this saying this is everyone’s experience with non-binary identity.

I am simply sharing to honor the truth of my own experience with these things.

I am deeply devoted to being my authentic self in this world, because I feel that is the truth of one’s “life purpose”.

And like a mentor of mine regularly reminds me, sometimes the path of learning who you are, means exploring who you are not along the way.

I have permission for that.