Weeknotes #28: Genders like Rivers
You are reading ‘Like person, like coach’: explorations at the intersection of personal narrative and coaching practice:
”Sometimes it's easy to forget that we spend most of our time stumbling around the dark.”
- Marty Baron, Spotlight (the movie)
I ended 2023 and started 2024 at the cusp of an expansive shift in my sense of gender. Over the last four years I’ve identified as a trans/non-binary man. Last year, on and off testosterone and contemplating top surgery, my sense of identity has shifted. It feels like I’m returning to she/her identity and pronouns. However, I don’t expect this new sense of gender to be a stationary or arbitrarily-defined one. It leaves room for many attributes beyond specific colours, atttributes and fashion styles.
I’m writing about this here because I’ve always believed that who I am as a person, the ways in which I’m growing and not growing in my personal life, have a lot to do with how I coach. Starting the year with such a huge shift has felt exhausting. But really, this is accumulated exhaustion from trying to make sense of my gender and living openly as a trans person for the last four years - though beautiful, arduous.
Sharing this news isn’t without risk. A lot can be misunderstood. But a lot can be said about the fact that all of our journeys, though intertwined, are deeply personal. And so, my gender journey isn’t the yard stick for any other person’s.
I come out of these years exploring gender with a renewed sense of understanding of what it really takes to do change. Most of the times, I realise, I mostly talk about and romanticise change. But in reality, I mostly, don’t want to change - it feels extremely yicky and uncomfortable. I love my privilege, my comfort, my familiarity, my old patterns - God, it feels safe and cosy.
And yet, there is a hunger in me that doesn’t want to stay there for too long. Often times, it takes me extreme events to decide to change a habit, take a stance, speak up. I’ve been thinking a lot about how I play into the systems I talk about changing. I no longer feel I’m outside the system trying to change it. I feel so deeply part of it, contributing to the way it operates day to day. And maybe if I change a micro-habit, it will replicate somewhere else, make a small dent in the fabric of how things work.
Would it be easier if the bad guys in the movies, that are so obvious to spot, would play out the same way in reality? Or if anti-oppression was really just a one-way dynamic between victim and oppressor? Or if liberation was attainable?
These are the questions running through my mind at the start of 2024. This year, I continue to coach and learn with OrgBuilders and Know You More. I’m also curious to join new teams, projects and partnerships. If you know someone you’d want to put me in touch with, please reach out.
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If you enjoy reading Like Person, Like Coach recommend it to others. If you resonate with what I write get in touch at iacobrbacian@gmail.com.
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