As a transsexual woman and a noviciate nun in a traditional lineage of a certain non-Abrahamic religion, I’ve given myself far too little kindness and understanding for the weight of the “covering” I need to do in this life. I currently live a stealth life, but have been activistically open. Whether closeted or covering, both require enourmously taxing energy investment. I’m not an energetic person, and often have “bad years”. I am neither brave nor “excellent”, and it rankles.

One needs to be a type-A superqueer just to survive in this society, especially in a clerical or religious capacity. Yet Heaven bestows a calling not only superqueers, but to normal, failing and flailing people. As such, “excellence” may merely be a smug word, an engine of conceit in rejection of divine guidance. We had best live without it, with our mortal bodies and lives.

What can we do to aid each other in desperate moments? What more can we do and say to make it ok to speak out as you have done here? Is it still too early for cisgender people to hear our anger and despair before our education, or can we admit to needing to vent and challenge our disadvantages as part of the education process? Perhaps they will not accept us until we are allowed to be whole, breakable persons before them. Perhaps the superqueer image we bear is just another symptom of our oppression.

Whatever steps we take, out or stealth, it’s great to know others are chomping at this bit. Thank you for a bit of perspective, to see that in your struggles is a resonance of mine; a reassurance that yes, this is all hard, and that’s just fine.

We aren’t alone.