Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Well, welcome, everybody. Thank you for joining us for another episode of the Healer's Corner.
This time we have Megan with us. And Megan, you.
You're going to talk with us not only about your story, but the Healing Through Transition and that.
That's like a loaded title right there.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: There's a lot to tell. There's probably more to tell than what we have time for in. In.
In this limited, you know, venue, but there, there is a lot to cover.
[00:00:53] Speaker A: Tell us, you know, about you and why this okay, title applies to you greatly.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: Well, let's see, it all really starts and people aren't going to believe this. And I told my endocrinologists and everybody who helped me through transition, my earliest baby memory in their jaws at the floor. And it was looking down past my shriveled umbilical cord where it was cut off, and I saw this little thing sticking up down there. And the first words I swear to gods that went through my mind were, oh, shit.
I knew it was going to be a ride right at that moment.
And, yeah, that's pretty much how it ended up being.
I grew up as the eldest in the family, so I was the experimental model anyway, and my grandparents spent a lot of time raising me because my parents worked.
I remember going to kindergarten is where a lot of socialization takes place. And it's important to. To know that for people who are trans, that those venues where you first start to rub up against the reality of. Of socialization, social norms, stereotypes, that's when you start to feel like you really don't quite fit into categories, or you do fit into categories and you're not accepted.
And for me, it was very, very difficult period in life. And I think that for most people who are trans, that's where the rubber meets the road, so to speak.
I remember that I did not fit in with any of the boys on the playground at all. I mean, they just kind of shied away from me, tried to fit into the girls group. You know, they had this wonderful little.
They just kind of giggled at the strange person who was trying to join them for unknown reasons.
And I ended up spending almost every recess isolated and alone. And that's how it really started.
Things like back in the day, it was probably the late 60s when I was in kindergarten, what they used to do is they used to teach you either to bow or curtsy. So the teacher taped a line on the floor. We had to come up and bow or curtsy. And guess what I could do?
I could do it really freaking good. I could curtsy and now she wanted me to bow. And I said, I don't want to bow, and was forced to bow before I could leave the line. But I wanted to curtsy.
And I also wanted to play in housewares, and she wouldn't let me do that.
And that's when childhood depression kind of entered in, and I started getting a weight problem.
So if I was picked on for being different, then the weight issue came in, and the person that I am, Megan, the girl, the woman that I am, kind of got swallowed up in this weight problem, which was.
I was picked on for that. And I resurfaced really briefly during fifth grade when all the other girls were getting bumps on their chest. And I was jealous.
I don't know why I was jealous, but I was jealous.
For two years, I was jealous as hell.
And then, of course, puberty hit, and that was a wild ride.
[00:05:14] Speaker A: And I was just going to point out, Megan, that I had met you before you went through your transition.
And I was horrified that I couldn't remember you as your old identity.
Like, I just could not. Like, I recognized your friend who came in. I'm like, oh, yeah.
And, like, the look you both had of, like, you mean. And I'm just going to like, I. I could not remember you.
[00:05:45] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:05:48] Speaker A: So I. I was just horrified because I could not remember. Then I felt bad that I didn't remember meeting you before, you know, And I'm like, I.
[00:05:57] Speaker B: That was not my real me. I was not. And it kind of is very, very inappropos to say that before transition, I was not authentically being who I am. And one of the things that I'd like to speak about is authenticity, or I should say, what are they. What do they call that?
Counterfeit.
Being a counterfeit person as a bit opposed to being the real person living Actually, who you are and how that relates with spirituality is very, very straightforward.
You can't really practice an authentic spirituality that is so fully grounded in who you are when you're not who you are or being who you are. And it took a long time, and it was a long road to get where I am now.
One of the things that. That's really good about transition for people who are allowed to transition, 50% of us that make it and don't end up killing themselves is that when. At that point, when the. When. When you finally hit that wall where the dysphoria becomes so heavy and so strong, you only have, you know, that the depression is you're going to either kill yourself or you have to transition and be who you are, because there's no other option. A lot of people like to say, well, you've got a choice.
Well, yeah, I got a choice. I can either die or I can be who I am.
That's my choice.
And a lot of people say, oh, you're trans. You chose to be that. This is something that you chose to be. You look to be. Let me tell anybody who's listening, there is nobody in their right mind who would choose to be transgender. You. It.
You don't choose to be it.
Some people end up running away from the realities, harsh realities of a life, and seek to have an alternate life by, by trying to find, you know, find a panacea in transition.
But for the most part, it's. It's something that is really not sought out.
But that being said, what I had started to say was when you finally reach that point where you can peel away the mask completely of who you are, not when all of that falls away, it is like the sun coming in, and all of a sudden you can make the transition to being authentically spiritual too. It is, it is a lot of fear falls away.
A lot of, There's a, There's a lot of change that I don't think most people understand.
[00:09:24] Speaker A: Say, Maria, do you have any questions? Because I think, if I remember correctly, you met Megan when Megan was fully Megan.
[00:09:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:35] Speaker A: So, yeah, you know, like, you have questions for, for Megan.
[00:09:41] Speaker C: I have, don't. My. I, I, I truly believe that in this life trend, you know, any kind of sexual orientation, we all are part of spirit, and we all come here at the same time. It wasn't something that was chosen.
The body may not, you know, coincide with the, the energy and spirit of it. But I do believe that every single. It's been existence since the beginning of time.
That's how I see it. You know, it's always been in existence in the beginning of time. I do have a family member.
[00:10:26] Speaker B: And.
[00:10:26] Speaker C: He'S not, he's not trans, but he had to. He hit the wall when he finally had to authentically accept who he is. He had to. And that was a hard thing for him, too. He had to accept who he is.
And you go, you go against society and you go against what society thinks you supposed to be because you're in this body.
And that's not what he was about.
So it was really hard. And I know that when he, he, My grandmother was the first one that he said, and he cried and I. And she's going, why Are you crying? This is who you are, you know. So it's something that I do. I truly believe that every single one of us, regardless if you're trans, you're gay, bi, whatever, we all came into this world since the beginning of time is the spirit is the essence. That's what it is.
[00:11:31] Speaker B: And to add on to that, just a couple of things that you had said.
I'm very, very Buddhist in a lot of ways. And no birth, no death, there is no beginning, there is no end.
And we, each of us experience the duality of being both male and female through many lifetimes.
My personal belief is that we have to experience the reality and the fullness of being in order to reach that wonderful spiritual light where we understand duality, we understand the importance of.
Of all that is, we understand where everything truly comes from, which is a point that is completely without gender and without shape, as the capitalists would would say, they would call it ain.
It's a point above the first Sephiroth together.
And there's a whole reason that we find ourselves in a world where duality is everywhere around us. It's. It's around us in sexuality. It's around us with light and dark, the sun and the moon.
We have roots of the trees below the tops of the trees. We've got duality everywhere. When you start to really look at nature, nature always brings us back to duality as being the heart of being in a lot of ways.
And in.
In kabbalistic circles, the creation of.
So you have Cather, Chakma, bina, those are the first three emanations on the Tree of Life.
Kether is the crown without, it's the first circle. If you can think of the Tree of Life, it's those circles, you know, set out, connected by lines.
But kether, the crown is considered to be completely gender neutral.
It's just considered to be like a point. It's the first realization of being.
And that generates chakma, which is the first circle, second circle on the left, it's the first circle on the left hand side.
So you have chakma. And that realization, that's considered the I am. It's that moment when, when reality realizes, when the divine realizes I am, there's that point. It's also called the image of God looking face to face.
And that realization creates bina and all the other spheres continually, even now. So it's not like it happened in time, back at that time. It's something that's continual and is always generating reality in every sphere. That exists.
And it's important to note, we have kether, which is gender neutral.
Chakma is the first male emanation. And Binah receives the energy from Chakma. So first. So we have the genitalia. We have the expression of the power of being, and we have the reception of that energy, which is. Is very. You know, if you look at the images, it's. It's sacred.
And then it creates both pillars on the Tree of Life. And one pillar is male and one pillar is female.
And I see all the gods and goddesses that we worship as finding their home on the pillars of this great reality.
And it kind of jives in with everything that Tibetan Buddhists teach about karma being able to create all worlds that exist.
There's little writing in the Tibetan book, Book of the Dead, if anybody wants to go read that. It's a great, great treatise on the in between.
So, yeah, it's. It's a very spiritual thing. There's no. There's no way. We like to. As human beings, we like to box everything into little boxes. Well, my spirituality is here, and my work life is here, and my home life is here. And my. No.
Or there's a spirit inside of here. No, everything is sacred.
Spirit. This is spirit. When I see Maria, when I see Melissa, I see spirit. I see the person and the sacred. Because everything that exists is sacred.
[00:17:01] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:17:02] Speaker B: And a lot of people miss that.
And when you try to box things up, that's not seeing reality the way it is.
It's not seeing that everything is interrelated.
And I think indigenous cultures get that. They understand Hawaiian traditions. Indigenous cultures understand that you can't separate spirituality from life. You just can't. Yeah.
[00:17:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:33] Speaker C: I was raised in a society in a culture where this was acceptable because they see the person in spirit.
And. And all of it. And everything is the spirit, and the healing is part of the spirit spirit. And if everything that you do, you think you say it's all spirit, it's all in cost, in spirit.
[00:17:56] Speaker B: Right.
[00:17:57] Speaker C: And I was thankful that I was brought up in that culture.
And I just could not understand.
[00:18:06] Speaker A: Why.
[00:18:06] Speaker C: People were so like, no, you can't do that, or you can't do that. No, it's a part of.
Even in nature.
Even in nature is natural.
You know, it's completely natural.
[00:18:21] Speaker B: You know, Native Americans understood that.
[00:18:25] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:26] Speaker B: And. And it's. It's like a lot of people don't understand. And Melissa, you know this. I mean, you told this to clients. Many people who walked into Goddess.
And. And it's It's a basic truth.
If your spirit is sick, it's going to show up in the body, and if the body is sick, it's going to show up in the spirit. The two are connected.
It just is that way.
And a lot of times, if you're looking for physical healing, start looking at your spirit and seeing what needs to be worked on in your spirit. And your body will follow a lot of times.
[00:19:07] Speaker A: So we have our first question in here.
She's like, remember we spoke about auras? Do auras have gender?
[00:19:18] Speaker C: No.
[00:19:20] Speaker B: No, no. Or is really don't have gender. Aura. Auras. When I read auras and I look at auras and read them, it's an expression of your life. Life force.
Okay.
It's an expression that extends beyond the body.
It's like.
It's just that. Okay.
But I don't perceive gender in aura per se.
No.
[00:20:00] Speaker A: Now, Megan, refresh my memory.
Were you doing readings before your transition?
[00:20:09] Speaker B: Oh, gosh, no. Well, I messed around. I had. Oh, geez.
I had this one great reading. I went to the. I used to go and visit my grandmother in the hills of Pennsylvania to get away from everybody. And I remember doing a tarot card spread there. That kind of was a foreshadowing of me becoming this.
And.
And I remember having the reading a long time ago when I was a kid that kind of pointed towards it, but, yeah, I've always been drawn. I know I came into this life when I was five or six years old, seven years old. I could pull energy through music, through the harmony and music and the happiness that that brought.
I could. I could. I mean it. My hands were tingling. I. I could express energy with my hands.
And that was one of the main triggers that I had, or realizing that energy. And the house that I grew up in, my parents were hippies.
[00:21:24] Speaker A: Yay.
[00:21:25] Speaker B: And they had a tarot deck in the house.
And I must have been five or six years old. Seven years old. And I.
I kind of really gravitated towards that deck. It was like something that I knew what it was.
And I could tell a humorous story about spirit board if anybody wants to hear it. It's really humorous.
[00:21:52] Speaker A: Let me follow up real quick, because when you said earlier that your spirituality.
Right. Isn't authentic and it kind of suffers if you're not living your true self. Like, how would you feel then? Or how do you feel that your readings were before you transition versus after? Do you feel like they got stronger and better or just. Were you just more.
[00:22:14] Speaker B: Oh, the readings, as far as the readings go, the readings, that's kind of like Maria. The readings are of spirit.
My spirit was always there, hidden below the surface.
She was always there. And one of the things I wanted to talk about was.
Well, as I was going through the years, I remember going through this period of self expression in college. And I painted this picture of this huddled up woman in a corner in this big mask with black eyes in back of her, all in blacks and grays.
I had dreams about her. And another. The last dream that I had before I really came to this reality was, you know, I dreamed about being at a college, at a high school reunion. I saw her in the crowd. This. This woman, gray hair. I mean, black hair, grays, gray, dirty. Like she'd been living under a bridge, completely uncapped.
And she turned her head and looked at me with the saddest eyes. And she took her dress off, just went completely nude. She wanted to say, look at me. See me.
And it just happened to be the night before therapy. I was in therapy at the time, and I was driving and it just hit me, two words like, she's me. That's me.
And it was like a door open and the dust settled. It was like lot of Lord of the Rings, you know, this door opened and a light shown through and the dust settled.
And that was like the moment in my life that really brought me to my soul when I realized that she was there all the time.
[00:24:24] Speaker C: So that woman was that woman that you saw, was that. You say it's a part of you, or was it.
Was it a guide? Was it a guide that was detouring you to. To do some kind of healing to do, to go in and just do some kind of reading?
I. I learned that when I. When I went in, when I stepped. When I finally embrace and went into healing, I end up healing myself too.
So is that something that you end up doing also when you embraced it and went into the reading, went into feeling the vibration of the energy?
[00:25:06] Speaker B: I really believe that that was the.
That the awareness of myself that I lost in kindergarten, the awareness she got buried so deep through years of bullying and years of just not quite fitting and years of that, in that instant that she finally just That I became me. Does that make any sense that the mask that I was wearing came off for good?
I went through a couple of very bad years after that where I wanted to transition and family did not quite understand, and.
And I. That's when I reached the point where I said, you know, I have to be who I am.
And I have to transition to be who I am.
But that moment, I remember I was living alone at the time, and I, you know, I'd separated with the person I was with. And.
And I had never in. In. In 50. In the 45, 50 years I've been on the planet.
Whenever I looked in the mirror, I just wasn't comfortable with it. Was looking back for those entire 45, 50 years.
I came back from therapy and, you know, the therapist said, start feeding her. Start working with her, love her. Start giving her life.
And I walked downstairs and I turned on the light and I looked in the mirror and I smiled.
And that was coming home.
For the first time in my life, I saw me.
[00:27:29] Speaker A: Now. Now to light.
[00:27:35] Speaker B: It was very powerful. It was very powerful.
[00:27:38] Speaker A: A really good Velma for Halloween every year.
Does she look like Velma?
[00:27:45] Speaker B: I do look like Vellum.
[00:27:51] Speaker A: And you are a Scooby Doo fanatic, so it's only fitting that you.
[00:27:54] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:27:58] Speaker A: Chair has another question. Well, she wants to remind us that you were going to tell a funny story about a Ouija board.
[00:28:04] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. It's very good. Do you want to hear that story now? Okay, I can do the.
Okay. So you know how. How Milton Bradley sold these things or continues to sell them?
Child's toy. Good for any child eight and up.
And.
Yeah, we can't sell alcohol to people who are 20 or. But we can sell. We can tell them to go communicate to the gun.
That's like.
So we had a Ouija board in the house. And I liked it. I. I mean, I gravitated straight towards the Ouija board, too.
And it worked, and things were okay with it. And my mom had decided I must have been around 8 or 9 years old, 10 years old.
And she decided that we are not going to have the Ouija board in the house. The house, it's not good for the house. And it's bringing spirit in and things she doesn't want in the house. And.
Well, so she took this thing and she threw it in the trash.
And here I am, I'm getting ready to walk to school.
Got out the door, and unfortunately, she left it on the top of the trash pile.
And I saw it sitting there with the planchette and looking so lonesome and everything. So I took it and I put it inside the hall closet in the top.
Now, she didn't know this.
She thought she threw it out.
And so a couple weeks go by, she goes into hall closet, and there she screams, the Ouija board. It came out of the trash, made its way back into the house.
And I never told her I brought it in.
So.
[00:30:01] Speaker C: That'S. That's.
[00:30:03] Speaker B: That's a pretty funny Ouija board story for anybody who wants to do that kind of a thing. It's fun.
[00:30:11] Speaker A: I feel like you should have thrown the years, kept buying a Ouija board and just randomly leave them in the house every so often. So every time she thought appear back.
[00:30:20] Speaker B: Oh, God.
[00:30:23] Speaker A: I. I read a story online where somebody did something similar, but it was the. The Amityville horror book.
[00:30:31] Speaker B: Oh, that would do it. That would do it. Yeah, that would do it.
[00:30:36] Speaker A: The sign or whatever kept copies and, like, leaving them randomly in the book. He would, like, purposely mess it up so it wouldn't look brand new and then, like a stash, Right. Yeah, that's something I would do just. Just because.
[00:30:52] Speaker B: Just want to bring to the four that for any of you who have friends or family who are some of the warning signs that you can look for, if they're questioning, do they become withdrawn? Do they become quiet? They stop communicating.
Depression will creep in, and they'll even stop, you know, participating in a lot of family things.
Just quite. Don't seem to fit into family stuff.
Those are all kind of signs that something's going on, that it might be a good idea to just say, hey, are you okay?
What's going on with you?
At the time when I.
When this hit me in my childhood, it had to be 1966, 67.
And at that time, there was really not a lot of anything going on for people who are transgender, let alone gay or lesbian and.
Or any LGBTQ expression.
So there was nothing in place. There was no support structure in place or anything for me to even kind of pinpoint what was going on.
I just kind of found refuge in books. I. I read every book in the library and was a loner. And so look, for that, you know.
[00:32:41] Speaker A: Would you say the opposite of that could also be true? Like the over trying to fit in the over.
Because you and I both know a common person.
[00:32:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:56] Speaker A: And they threw themselves so hard into trying to be male.
Like, they. They would cross that line until, like, the chauvinistic and everything. Just trying so.
And running in those groups of people who were that over. Masculine, Toxic masculine, just trying to finally feel it.
[00:33:20] Speaker B: So one of the things that happened. We didn't talk about it. One of the things that happened in puberty was.
And it's, you know, sometimes difficult to talk about, but I remember the very first time I masturbated, and it's kind of, like, there, I'm a guy. Now I'm a guy.
And the equation that masculinity is equated with the sex act, I think is a real problematic kind of a thing because.
Or the vice versa for women, too, or who are, you know, because that could happen with women as well, that your genitalia do not necessarily dictate who or what you really are. In a deeper sense.
And I'd like to really point out, for those who are listening, who are kind of disgusted at this point and are tired of transgender people in general, that there is a difference between gender identity and gender attraction.
So gender identity is how a person feels about their own gender, what their own gender expression is.
Attraction is simply the. The sexual. The sex or the person that that person is attracted to.
And it doesn't mean that if you're transgender, you're attracted to women that you're going to go into. Actually. It means if for people who are authentic, Authentically transgender, unless you're lesbian, too, it doesn't mean that you're looking at getting into a bathroom and wanting to. You simply want to be where you belong.
And I think that fear is really not well placed. I mean, you can end up going into a women's room and having lesbians go in who are attracted to women who are, you know, seeing women in a women's restroom or locker room or whatever.
And you can have the same thing with gay men going into a. Gay. Going into a locker room, seeing men or. Or restroom. And it. It just makes no sense. The fears that we have in today's society, if you want to get really up to it, that's. That's where you be kind of like, well, not. Not the sphere of transgender people.
And there's a difference. And I think that.
And I'm probably going to get in lots of trouble for saying this, but there's a real difference between somebody who is genuinely transgender, who has dysphoria. Gender dysphoria is what it's called literally being wired as the opposite of the sex that you were born with. It's. It's.
It's. It's terrible.
It's called gender dysphoria.
And.
But it's different than cross dressing.
It's different than drag queen wrestling.
It's different than any of those kinds of expressions that one would find in the LGBT community. There's a place for them, and there's a place they can be, and everybody can be happy together. But I think that the general public sometimes latches on to all of that. When me, when I transitioned, I simply wanted to disappear.
I said I wanted to. I wanted to blend in so nobody could look at me and say, oh, look, there goes, you know, guy dressed as a gal. That's not, you know, that's not a woman.
So that's. That's completely the opposite. So I. I just wanted to point that out.
And then there's, you know, that's me personally.
But of all the wonderful expressions there are in the human race, I think that it's important to point out that even a lot of the cultures, some of the cultures that are around the early cultures, considered us to be those who walk between worlds, because we are.
I think we talked about this and baphomet and how we express almost both genders and we can see the worlds from both sides, which is a unique perspective, especially for those who are. Who are born, you know, intersex or, you know.
So anyway.
[00:38:52] Speaker A: We have a question that says in the spiritual world, what is the most noticeable difference since transitioning? Or has it generally remained the same? Either way.
[00:39:03] Speaker B: Repeat that first speak. The spiritual world.
[00:39:06] Speaker A: Yeah. In the spiritual world, what is the most noticeable difference since transitioning?
[00:39:19] Speaker B: For me, it is this connection to endless spirit, love and peace.
It's this.
I don't know how to put it into words. It's. It's like being able to see clearly in a lot of ways for the first time.
It's being able to be who you are with no fear. As I said, when you get to the point where you peel away the layers of the onion and you. You transition, it's very easy to take those things like spiritualities or dogmas that you grew up with to just illustrate. I was Roman Catholic, went from Roman Catholicism to Eastern Orthodox, went from Eastern Orthodox to Episcopalian, went from Episcopalian to Unitarian Universalist.
And that was my springboard, really, for starting to really explore my Buddhist roots, explore Taoism.
A lot of things that I had been brought up with as a child, we can get into that. You know, it's another time. But I was. I was brought up with a lot of Eastern mysticism in my childhood, and I knew everything had to fit together and. And in those years really helped to springboard me towards being who I am and practicing an authentic spirituality. And then came transition. And when transition hit, I was. Any of the dogmatic remnants that might have been in my life just disappeared, really just went away.
And one of the reasons I love Wicca so much is our. Our only prison. And I'm not, like, being you know, somebody who's advocating go out and become Wiccan, but all we say is, and it harm none, do whatever you want.
So you're not limited in what you want to practice for yourself, the deities that you are called to. But I realize because of the connections on that tree of life, that these are all expressions of the ultimate divine, which is so far beyond our imagining that that's. That's the place where the Jews said, if you saw the face of God, you'd cease to be.
And that's like nirvana, to tell you the truth. It's the same place that Buddhists go when they enter nirvana. It's a complete absence of self.
So at all.
Does that answer the question?
[00:42:42] Speaker C: I think so. Going.
Yeah, I think so. So going to the spiritual aspect of it, the Buddha, Hindu, and following. What resonate with you as far as, you know, any kind of structured.
I call them structured.
And some of them, I do take aspects from different ones too. I. I'm like you. I do take aspects, you know, this resonate with me that I. I can throw out the rest.
So that kind of help you also going through the transition when you finally said, you know, I'm gonna Catholic doesn't work for me. I was born into Catholic, but it doesn't work for me. This works for me.
So that kind of help you get to the screen more.
[00:43:28] Speaker B: The way spirituality at that point was kind of secondary.
I. I have to admit the emotional.
What happened was I had discovered this side of myself, and I had gone to the person I was with at the time, and this person was a little bit lesbian, and I'd like, you know, still exploring who I'd like to be with.
And I know she didn't like being with guys.
And I came.
Came to the house, and I said, well, guess what, hon? I'm.
I'm transgender. I'm not.
And she basically said, well, if I absolutely wanted to be with a woman, I won't. I wouldn't with you.
And I had a bracelet that I had on at that time, which I tore off and threw in the trash.
I went into a very, very dark place. I started drinking very badly, damaging my liver to kind of drinking.
Used to put on this woman CD in the car, which was where the only place where I was alone.
And I used to cry, and I used to sing it at the top of my lungs, and I used to cry and dream about driving the car into the, you know, concrete pylons.
And the person that I was that I reverted to was neither male Nor female.
It was just like the shell of an empty human being that had no person that was like, not authentically anybody at all. Very. It was a very bad place to be in.
And I. I remember, and it was kind of like more guish, was more male, because I kind of felt that I had been told she didn't want to be with a woman.
And.
And I remember getting a divorce and waking up one day. I was still going to therapy at this point.
And I remember getting to therapy, walking through the doors, sitting down. This is just going to be a normal therapy session. And I just broke. I sobbed my eyes up.
I had finally hit the wall. And that's the wall.
We call it the wall. It's the realization that the behaviors, the drinking, depression, thinking about suicide.
You either have to transition and be who you are, or you're just not going to make it.
And I want to have my kids to live for.
So many people in my life that I love.
And I. I made the decision to transition. I thought, you know, my family were hippies, they'll be good with this and everything. Well, they weren't.
I lost my birth family for four years, but I had to be who I am.
I just kept saying, oh, you choose. Chose to be this.
And it was like, you know, you just don't understand.
You don't get it.
It's not a choosing, it's just not using you. You either have to transition or if become so bad and so painful that not being able to be who you are. And for anybody who's cisgender out there, which is the natural gender that you woke up with this morning or were born with, imagine waking up one day and all of a sudden being called Bob, if you're surely. Or being called the opposite of who you are, and being treated the opposite and having to use the opposite restroom that you were born to use and being forced to conform. Try that for a day. For anybody who's cisgendered, who thinks that.
That they know what this is all about and that it's an option, you try doing that. Not just for a week or a day, a few days. Try it for about, you know, try it for a good year, try it for a good 20 years, and you'll begin to get some inkling of what somebody who is truly transgender and experiences gender dysphoria goes through.
It's. It's.
You're not ever allowed to be who you are.
And my choosing to be who I am, yeah, I made a choice, but it was the only choice I could make.
Or I wouldn't be sitting here today.
If you really love somebody enough, would you love them enough to be free and to be who they are?
That's the question.
Love should not be controlling. Love should be freeing, and you truly love somebody. My last words, you know, for the audiences, if you truly love somebody, and love is really the core of spirituality.
If you. If you truly love somebody, let them be who they are, you know?
Anyway, lovely being with everybody. I enjoyed this hour tremendously.
[00:49:15] Speaker A: Now, thank you for coming on and sharing your story and being able to talk openly about it and what you went through.
You know, as you've been talking, I've been thinking. I'm like, do I know more than. Than two?
You know, I'm like, at least not to my knowledge. Right? Which. Not that I really care, but because of the topic. And I'm like, who else do I know?
You know, I'm like, I think I only. I only know two.
But you know, that that other person was a. Was somebody very close to me at that time. And. And I had a whole different experience with that one versus, like, hi, my name's Megan.
You know, and I'm like, all right, come on in, Megan. Let's go.
[00:50:08] Speaker B: I will say.
I will say at working at the store and everything, you may not be aware, we have a lot of people from the community, the LGBT community. You've got frequent goddess elite. They find a home here at our store.
And I'm really grateful to all of you out there.
Come on in. Make it a home.
It's a safe place to be.
[00:50:37] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, I think the only people were like, is like, those that come in being a jerk, you know, that. That's who we have a problem with.
[00:50:47] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:50:50] Speaker A: You know? You know, just don't be a jerk. Otherwise, we don't care who or what, you know?
[00:50:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:50:59] Speaker A: Come. Do you.
[00:51:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
Don't be counterfeit.
Yeah, Real.
[00:51:08] Speaker A: You know, it's like, I perfectly see. And if you were having a bad day before you got here. But don't put your bad day on those of us working or other customers in the store, you know, like.
Yeah, I'm sure you will find a sympathetic ear somewhere in there, but just don't come in, you know, being a jerk of any. Any sort.
[00:51:29] Speaker B: And on the other hand, you may be surprised. You might come in and you might find some healing.
We have some great healers on staff, right, Maria?
[00:51:41] Speaker A: There are people who will come in after work. Like, they did have that bad day at work. They're Like, I just, I just needed to come stand in here.
[00:51:47] Speaker B: Yeah, right. They do. They do. Yeah, they do.
You know?
[00:51:54] Speaker A: You know, and then I might joke, well, if you stand too long, I might hand you a box of something to put away while you're here.
[00:52:04] Speaker C: I, I, I was just. I, I'm just so grateful that I was brought up in a culture where this was acceptable. I was just, I'm so grateful that, you know, I, I was brought up that way, and I do have a few in my family, so I was just so grateful that I, I did not. I was not brought up where there's a certain standard you have to be or you look down upon, you know, and the, the, the people that I had most fun with when I used to work in Hawaii, I used to be a manager, and one of us, assistant manager, one of the store. The best customers were the, the lb, you know, gbg. They were great. They were fun. They come in the store and you, you're have. If you're having a bad day, they make you laugh because they just say.
[00:53:01] Speaker B: It like it is.
Yeah, they, They've reached the.
I'll use a little explanative here. If you really want a truly freeing experience, reach the end. I don't give a.
I did say that on public tv, and I apologize.
You might have to edit that out.
[00:53:22] Speaker A: I'm going to have to edit that part out.
[00:53:23] Speaker B: You're going to have to edit that out. Reach the age of I don't care.
[00:53:27] Speaker A: Here we go.
[00:53:28] Speaker C: Yes. Yes.
[00:53:29] Speaker B: You get to that age, and that will.
That's very freeing. When you don't care what anybody thinks. You don't care what anybody says. You don't care what they say about you, about what you hang out with, what you eat. Going out with House, you have.
[00:53:53] Speaker C: I just, I like, I like, I like talking to them because they have this, this because of what they have gone through.
[00:54:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:54:01] Speaker C: What have. What they have gone through. And they still have a lot of passion of life, and they come in there with this. I give them a lot of credit because that's confidence right there. That's strength.
You know, I mean, to just say, this is who I am.
Take it or leave it. I do not care. You know, that is a lot of strength.
[00:54:24] Speaker B: Yeah. And a lot of people. I got to point this out, if you.
To any of you who do have somebody who's transgender who's going through transition, listen, transition isn't hard.
It's not the transition. That's how you. We're finally allowed to Be who we are.
Transition isn't hard. Grant, Grant. That there may be some issues figuring out style and clothing that goes with other pieces. And it's style. I mean, because there's. It can be really confusing for cisgendered women. You have, you know, the Vermont look, you've got the California look, you've got the east coast, Maine look, you've got the Canadian look, you got the Florida look. You got all of these styles, guys, you just go throw on a T shirt and T shirt, jeans, sweats and tennis shoes and you're set. You guys got it easy. But for people who are in transition, the most difficult part about transition is just figuring out what your look is.
What, who am I? And what look looks best with who I. Who am I? What look is the best for me?
So many different. But that doesn't even take into account body shapes.
So that's the most difficult part about transition. But for those people in your life who are transitioning, they're finally allowed to be free and they're going to take those that freedom. They're going to run like a horse at a racetrack. I mean, they finally been kept in check for years and they are finally full of joy and happiness being able to be who they are.
The worst thing you can do is rain on it and say, you know, this is the wrong thing to do or this is not the moment you see somebody being, living authentically who they are, it's kind of like, wow, now I understand why you were so miserable.
[00:56:37] Speaker A: I mean, I'm gonna admit you just named off a bunch of fashion styles that I've never heard of.
Where was I when all of that.
[00:56:49] Speaker B: There, there are all these fashion styles and vogue fashion stalls. I mean, we haven't. You haven't even gotten to Europe, for God's sake.
[00:56:59] Speaker A: I mean, I, I like my, my easy middle age. You know, I still fall into the goth category, but.
[00:57:09] Speaker B: Right, but that's still a comfortable category. That's still you.
It's authentically you.
[00:57:17] Speaker A: My only complaint is like, you can't wear faded black with new black.
So that is.
[00:57:22] Speaker B: No, that's true. And there are shades of gray that don't go with other shades of gray.
[00:57:26] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:57:27] Speaker B: That's true. That's very true.
[00:57:30] Speaker A: Misery of looking in an all black closet or drawer or the basket of laundry and it's all black and you're trying to find that one damn shirt. And so, yeah, that, that is the hardship of my faction there.
[00:57:51] Speaker B: You know, that's funny. That's funny.
[00:57:55] Speaker A: But we'll.
[00:57:56] Speaker C: I grew up with T shirt. I grew up with T shirts and shorts and. And slipper.
[00:58:01] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:58:03] Speaker A: Slippers.
[00:58:08] Speaker C: Didn't really use shoes until I got here because the sn.
[00:58:13] Speaker B: You know, it's interesting you should say that. All of my sons, all of my son's aides are Nepalese. And they get over here and they're walking around either in their bare feet or. Or flip flops in the snow.
[00:58:31] Speaker C: I can't do cold.
[00:58:34] Speaker B: Shoes do not seem to be categorically something that belongs to. To their wardrobe.
[00:58:45] Speaker A: Well, thank you, Megan, for joining us.
We have any last minute questions, otherwise, we'll go ahead and wrap up. But thank you guys for joining us for another episode here and thank you, Megan, for sharing your story and letting us in on your.
Your life there that you've been through to get to where you are now and.
[00:59:07] Speaker B: Absolutely.
Yeah.
[00:59:10] Speaker A: And hope you guys join us for our next.
Next time around.
But then have a good night and we'll see you guys later.
[00:59:20] Speaker B: Thanks. Bye. Bye, everybody. Bye.
[00:59:29] Speaker A: Oh, now it's like, wait, before you go after stage.
