If you're an adult starting to explore your gender identity, it can be tough knowing where to begin. Here's some advice from trans people to help you on this intimate and powerful journey. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
You're listening to lifekit from NPR.
Hey, everybody, it's Marielle Segarra.
Today's episode is a love letter to any adult who wants to explore gender.
It comes to us from reporter Kyle Norris.
Kyle calls himself a guy with an untraditional beginning, and he began exploring his identity when he was 40.
He doesn't use the word transition because he says it makes it feel like he started life as one person and then morphed into a totally different human being.
But thats not what happened.
The way I do explain my experience is by saying I embraced my authentic self and began to make my body a home.
Whoever you are and whatever words you use to describe yourself, you deserve to feel at home in your body and to feel free from all the gender stereotypes and rules out there about what clothes youre allowed to wear and what kinds of jobs you can have, whether you should wear lipstick.
So on the show today, Kyle is going to share some tools to help you explore your gender and express it in a way that feels authentic to you.
There's this quote I love.
Not knowing is most intimate.
It comes from a buddhist story where a monk is going on a pilgrimage and he's not really sure where he's headed.
And his teacher says not knowing is most intimate.
It's been one of my favorite quotes for decades because that place of not knowing, it's so real and tender.
It's where everything starts.
Also, can we put that quote on a t shirt?
For some of us, exploring our gender is reaching back into our childhood and returning to a young self knowledge.
For others, that inkling that your gender might be bigger than what you've been taught can be brand new information.
Wherever this finds you.