When Are We Whole?
In the ebb and flow of identity, especially through my gender transition, I carried an unhealthy sense of wholeness. But I think it’s an experience that might resonate with you. I was departing from who I had become in the first 30 some years of my life because a good friend shared that he feels gender in his body. I understood gender as a letter I was given that told me what clothes to buy and what haircut to choose from a poster with five options. But alive in my body? No.
Acrylic and medium on canvas, 18 by 24 inches. Textured self portrait with a green blouse and a steady gaze. Lavender and gold ground with leaf forms at left and tree lines at right.
When I started hormone replacement therapy, it was a decision to explore anything that could get to the root of my unease and depression. I was uncomfortable with the word transition and couldn’t even answer directly if it had to do with being a woman. If transition meant crossing from one to another, I knew where I started. But the decision felt too selfish and too risky, so I couldn’t imagine who I was becoming. I couldn’t put words together to plea with everyone I loved to come along with me.
It turns out that becoming Toni Rose was slow, painful, and lonely at times. I had a tremendous number of opportunities to see myself in between departed from old but new not yet in sight. Folks, she was awkward some days, but it felt like everyday. And then came the deeper question: can we ever be partial? I had hope that I was transitioning from one wholeness to another wholeness, but I had no promises. I felt that some days if you had collected all my pieces in a bucket, I would have been shy of a complete person.
When I felt most awkward, most in-between two places, and most certain that I was partial, I’d find a way to see myself long enough to finish a self-portraiture. In the midst of hormone shifts, bloody neck and cheeks from hair removal, body changes, and the realities of relationship loss, each brushstroke was proof I still existed. Every painting caught me mid-becoming and whispered that wholeness wasn’t at some arbitrary end, but scattered all along the way. I wasn’t yet who I would become, but I was already whole, not in spite of the fragments but within them.
Wholeness is about seeing ourselves in motion and at times fractured and naming it enough. The in-between isn’t a wound but a sacred place. We can never be less than whole but have to remind our body and reassure our brain. Paint a self-portrait to see on the canvass that you are indeed intact and even a work of art.
