The Divinity of Transformation
Erik Karits Photography (@erik_karits)
The capacity to transform is one of the most beautiful and challenging processes in the natural world. All of us are living proof.
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Welcome to my blog! I’ll start with a little bit about me, in case you’re new here. My name is Morgane Smith, I’m 22, I’m a musician and writer from LaGrange, GA, and I’m a trans woman living through what seems to be a profoundly transitory era in my personal spheres.
It seems that the past year or so has been one marked by constant flux for many people close to me. Many of my friends have just graduated college and are in the liminal space between education and career. Some have gone on to graduate school, adapting to a new location and way of learning, while others have rushed headlong into their chosen career paths, eager to reclaim the sense of structure that college provided them. Many of my former classmates have outgrown the places they’ve lived for years, and, with excitement and nerves in equal measure, are in search of a new place to call home.
As my parents approach midlife, their orientations towards their goals and motivations are similarly shifting, mirroring the transitory motions of their daughter’s peers. There’s been talk of shifting careers or exploring different living locations, of creating a circumstance more conducive to the type of growth my parents seek to experience. This drive is borne not from regret, not from contemptuous reflection on the years spent in our hometown, but from a practical acknowledgement that to be intentionally alive is to change from time to time.
I think it can’t be coincidence that 2021 was the year I finally consciously realized I was transgender. As almost any trans person would tell you, I had known, on varying levels of consciousness, for many years. But 2021 was the year when I first became able to view myself with nonjudgemental eyes and speak what I knew was true: that I am a woman. Maybe that’s why I’ve been particularly attuned to the transitory ambitions of those closest to me. Because, right now, every moment of my existence is spent in transition. Socially, physically, vocally, and spiritually - my body and mind are doing constant work to usher me down the path I was born to walk.
That this path is preordained does not diminish any of its obstacles, of which I have encountered several. In spite of the overwhelmingly supportive community I have in my friends, these obstacles have affected me disproportionately to the amount of time they have taken up in my life, occupying my mental real estate far beyond their welcome. When one is resisting a hegemony so deeply ingrained in society that most don’t even register its existence as mutable, even the slightest disapproval can be incredibly demoralizing. In writing and in meditation, I’ve reflected on why that is, and tried to connect with the history of my people (whom author Alok Vaid-Menon affectionately calls our “trans-cestors”). The sentiment I’ve come to uphold as most valuable to me is one that Vaid-Menon articulates across their body of work - that trans people embody the human capacity to change, and this strikes fear into the hearts of those who have been forced to become unchangeable.
In my coming-out letter to my parents, I paraphrased a metaphor that I found on TikTok that speaks to the beautiful, but inevitably painful process of transformation that lay before me. I applied it specifically to gender transition, but I’ve reworded it many times when speaking to those in my life mentioned above who are undergoing different types of transition.
“The caterpillar doesn’t know it’s going to transform into a butterfly. At least, it isn’t consciously aware from the moment of its birth. But, little by little, it starts to gather the materials needed for its transition, all the while wondering what it’s doing this for. Incrementally, it becomes aware that it is partaking in the divine act of transformation, a ritual so sacred and life-giving that it is practiced by thousands of species of all different sizes all over the world. That it’s divine does not mean that this process is easy or, in fact, linear. The caterpillar, once it enters its cocoon, slowly devolves into its most basic components, spending a sizable portion of its life existing merely as goop. It’s during this time that the most critical elements of its transition occur, but it’s also during this time that it suffers the most. Transition like this is painful, and if it had the ability to, the caterpillar might throw up its six thoracic hands in resignation, giving up on its dreams of being a butterfly. Surely, life as a caterpillar is preferable to enduring another minute in this formless purgatory. But long-term, it isn’t. And even if it were, the caterpillar doesn’t have much of a choice. Neither do trans people. The more I thought about my decision to be honest, the more I realized that I didn’t have much of a choice at all. And although the next year or so will be spent as shifting, malleable goop, I have the resources and the support system to have a much happier goop phase than most, and for that I’m truly grateful.”
To any trans people reading, I hope you found some comfort in these words, as I and as those close to me did. Know that you represent and embody the human capacity to change. Some people fear that, but keep in mind that you are carrying on a legacy of possibility, and there is nothing that can take that away from you, however painful it may be. Never give up hope.
“What the world needs right now is transition. I hope that we as queer people can be the stewards in this process. Because we have changed, so too can the world.”
This is a quote from Alok Vaid-Menon from their speech, “But I Have Hope,” which, among other things, details the possibility for unconditional love inherent in the process of transition. If I had to pick a single person to cite as my greatest inspiration, it would be Alok. The ideas and feelings that would take me 2000 words to cogently convey, they do in 20 words. Such is the nature of this quote, which articulates why I feel like the process of transition is a spiritual experience, one that can guide the world on a path oriented towards love, one that looks to trans people as its practitioners and exemplars. Because we have changed, so too can the world.
So long as I write truthfully and lucidly, not every blog post can end on this positive a note. But when I first made the conscious discovery that one could be whomever one wants, that change is to be celebrated, that human beings are not meant to remain static, I felt a childlike sense of wonder at the world, an untainted joy that, just for a moment, can do without nuance. And until further notice, I plan to remain there. As an act of self-love, as an act of community love, as an act of resistance.
Here’s to the goop that we are, and to the stewards that we will be.
Morgane
