Elliot’s 2021 Graduate Essay
“Your father will be dying in the next few days,” were the words being shared as my brother, sister, and I sat in a Wisconsin hospital just hours after we had flown in from Colorado. This was five years ago. I was 20 years old, a sophomore in college, and nowhere near ready to not have my dad in my life. It felt like a time where my life ended and started all at once. Ever since, I have been searching for life’s purpose, my purpose, my sanity, my wellbeing and balance, yet each time I find myself discovering more, life changes in ways I never could have imagined and it makes me want to learn and love more than ever before. The three major life experiences that have led to me mastering the art of psychology are the death and dying process of my father, discovery of my mutable gender identity, and global pandemic upheaving everything I once knew about myself and the world.
My father’s death was a long and slow progression. He had a long chronic illness throughout my childhood that looked like waves of mental and physical well-being changing abruptly and what seemed like no progress whatsoever. There were times where my father was running and biking marathons, in full health, and other times where his feet were in so much pain that he could barely stand, sitting in a wheelchair. I remember my father highly focused on food and physical treatments to aid in his pain management. I remember an intuitive medicine man coming to our home to help with my father’s condition. I remember daily pill containers filled with supplements that he would sit and refill on Sunday nights. I remember the briefcases and filing cabinets filled with notes about medications and treatment regimens. When my parents were having marital problems, my mother suggested therapy and my father was reluctant. They went for many weeks together and ultimately decided on divorce. After their divorce my father’s symptoms persisted and may have even gotten worse up until the point where he found out he had cancer.
When my father was diagnosed with stage four cancer he moved to Wisconsin to live with my grandmother, receive radiation and chemotherapy, and started going to church with some of his sisters. During that time I was seeing my father periodically on school breaks. Our visits were short and I was not included in the ways he and his family were learning to cope and support one another through the diagnosis, treatment, and recovery.
His physical will was strong beyond belief. He worked himself out of the ICU and eventually to home where he was able to live another two months until he eventually went back into the hospital and died. Being an athlete helped him preserve far beyond many of the nurses and doctors expected. I now feel and know looking back that there were many emotional pains and psychological traumas that my father never looked into or worked at. Mental health was something we had subtly, or not so subtly, brewing in the background, in his life, as well as, with family members.
While he was dying and since his death, I’ve spoken with my grandparents and learned of other family members experiencing various levels of obsessive compulsive disorders (OCD), anxiety, depression, and possibly schizophrenia. This knowledge alone did not drive me straight to learning about mental health in an academic setting, it led me first to spirituality and holistic healing.
For years after his death I have tried out various workouts, diets, life coaches, healers, therapists and discovered that I wanted to show up in my life with others in a larger way. I decided to create an online coaching business for other queer people who are looking to be their true selves and not be afraid of who they are. While doing this I discovered that something deep within me did not feel good about what I was doing because I was not being true to myself. One day I decided to shave my head and from that point forward I’ve been questioning gender in myself, how society has constructed gender expectations, and how that affects my wellbeing and others. I’ve struggled more than I ever have before mentally, physically, emotionally, and financially since coming out as transgender.
Then at my lowest where I could barely get myself out of bed, to a job, to be inspired by anything I asked for help and continued forward. I started going to school for integrative healing arts and advanced hypnotherapy to pursue my dream of being an online coach and healer for others. Along the way I have healed a lot on my own and it’s led me here to pursue going even deeper. While in school for spiritual healing I have begun to notice gaps in the curriculum that do not account for LGBTQ+ and other intersectional identities that affect our overall health and wellbeing.
Being trans has made me inspect every inch of the psyche of myself and others. My sensitivities are heightened which can give me the ability to cut through the bull shit quicker when people are not saying what they truly feel and it has made me question my worthiness beyond belief. Along the way I sought out therapists. The first therapist was not queer or trans and they helped me with many of my financial challenges but did not dare go into anything that had to do with being transgender and exploring that realm with me. It was a huge turn off and I decided the next time I looked for a counselor I would specifically ask for someone who is transgender. The next one I was paired with was a great fit. Although, they did not identify as trans, they had been dating a transgender person for well over 10 years, pre and post operations. It was super helpful to have the perspective of a partner of a trans person and someone who truly cared and took the time to research on her own to give me the best possible care she could. That counselor has since moved on to a private practice and I no longer can work with her due to insurance issues. This is one of many examples of how mentally taxing it is even to get the care that we need, especially in the medical world. I desire to change the gap in transgender therapy care and start a wave of more access to transgender therapists across the board.
Upon learning about my gender identity, the global pandemic transformed my everyday living. While I worked from home, I felt like I was suffocating in a house full of toxic energy and I needed an outlet. I started going for two to three hour walks and learned about my nearby neighborhood. The streets over weeks and months changed from being the loudest streets to the quietest where everyone stayed as far away from each other as possible. I started having conversations with people living on the street and had deep conversations with them, hugged them at times, and mostly listened. Since restaurants are open again I have gone to the bars and months later I have seen things turn back almost to business as usual from before the pandemic. Yet there is an unseen dark thick cloud in the air, people snarl louder, and there seems to be a stronger fear of each other than I’ve ever experienced before.
On my walks I started dancing on the street and I would get honks and cheers and smiles. I felt deeply connected to others and I wanted to do it more and more. Over the pandemic I started a YouTube channel where for 30 days I tried something I had never done before. For one of the videos I danced and asked for money on the street. It really pushed me out of my comfort zone. Since then, it has driven me to go more gutsy with my public dancing for many reasons. I feel it is a way I can brighten the world through my passion and I know how dance can deeply affect our sense of wellbeing.
Along the way I have learned that there are people who will be totally ecstatic about you and some people who will look at you in utter disgust. It does affect me psychically where I worry about how I am in public and I question what my goals are for doing it in the first place. Overall, I have this deep desire to be bold and show the world to not be afraid of one another and to keep fighting for each other’s goodness. To believe in our ability to trust each other requires trust in ourselves and I greatly want to better understand and problem solve how we can support others and really make a big change in mental health services.
The last five years have been a total whirlwind and I would like to utilize my expertise in the areas where life has challenged me the most to support others in overcoming some of their biggest battles. What I have come to learn is that learning, guidance from others, and support are necessary for our thrival (survive and thrive). While mental health services have come a long way, there is so much needed. And we need folks in the mental health field to understand the complexities of how mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, financial, racial, sexual and gender orientation intertwine and cannot be separated into simple boxes. My deepest wound of losing my father has led me to my greatest and deepest discoveries about life and love for myself and others. My identity has been a great struggle for me to understand and accept, yet it pushes me to move forward and fight for my family of trans, non binary people. My personal experiments with society and community during the great pandemic, political and societal unrest of our lifetime, have led me to being a stronger leader and advocate for myself and others.