Liberation Narrative: Development Outside the Boxes

Sexuality for folks that are non-normative means that each person might not fit into a box of what normalcy or development should look like. It is challenging the containers of development because the containers of first-generation, immigrant, diaspora, and LGBTQIA+ folks are inherently non-normative from the Eurocentric cis-heteronormative monolithic hegemonic standards of psychology. It means understanding, with deep listening, that the social forces influencing community members add layers of complexity that people in positions of power must be mindful of — so as not to replicate them.

It is questioning the parameters of monoliths of development, and celebrating in community. It means getting to know each individual person and the unique, ever-changing expressions of their experiences, with compassion and presence.

This might include understanding how their sexuality is being expressed inter-generationally.

Personal story:

I started my period when I was 12 years old, with the sheer awkwardness of a pre-teen that had little-to-no sexual development education outside of the birthing canal videos played in my sixth-grade health class. Asking my parents to sign my permission slip to attend sex-ed was terrifying and reflective of the unspoken, hardened grief and closed communication norms within my own family. There is way more to unpack there, but not in this story.

A “tomboy” at heart, I felt less than comfortable with the gendered expressions of White suburban girlhood, which felt foreign to me and self-alienating. That is when depression first began visiting me. The origins of my hyper-independence and pressure to fit in began to sink in more rigidly alongside my thick, blossoming body hair and boobs. Patriarchy became the ruler of normalcy in which I measured myself up, even in my demands to resist girlhood, because it reinforces the very systems I was up against. Judith Butler’s work about power and reinforcement of power by going up against it directly reminds me as an adult, that I was doing the best I could to survive and make sense of big feelings in a big world.

So, when I marked my calendar each month waiting for the arrival of my glorious period like my sex-ed class suggested, I began developing obsessive tendencies in attempt to mitigate the fear that I was having irregular periods that did not reflect my sticker-marked monthly calendar. I was “becoming a young woman” and failing at it. The data on my calendar showed me that. My awkward movements, sadness, and internal alienation showed me that.

Well unknowingly to me, irregular periods are normal for adolescence.

Admittedly, I developed an intense fear that I was a pregnant virgin during the menstrual interims. It didn’t occur to me to ask anyone or talk about it, because I had internalized shame of purity culture and gendered binaries, that I must be ostracized for being am impure girl and that I need redemption. So, I held it inwards.

Persecutory fears weren’t mine to hold as a child, but systemic lens of social forces would have me understanding as an adult that that anxiety was situated in me and my family’s migrations story. As well as internalized homophobia I was unaware of. The social forces became a point of psychic intrusion, with reference and gratitude to Dr. Lara Sheehi’s work. Dread convinced me that my name, Maryam, or my nickname Mary, reflected that I could possibly be like the biblical Mary and become a pregnant virgin. At that time, I was 13 and 9/11 just occurred. I began hearing at school that me and my family were terrorists, needing to go back to where we came from. It wasn’t the first time I heard racial slurs and felt confusion socially, but nonetheless the rejection was unsettling in my “girlhood” developmental era.

When I was sexually assaulted at 15, depression and an eating disorder arrived full fledge in to steer the ship so to say, attempts to manage fear and uncertainty with rigidity. Again, it did not occur to me to tell anyone, but I internalized it and expressed it somatically. I stopped eating, tried to control the uncontrollable, and tried to be “better.” I poured myself into school, masking my pain with good grades. Eventually, dropping to a body weight that was too low to sustain monthly periods at all, with hospitalization at one point. I developed fear of being touched.

It took years of therapy, personally and relationally, for me to become comfortable in my body, and to ground and embody soothing internally. Most of the healing admittedly outside of the therapy room, in the relationships cultivated, time spent in nature, dance steps, art sessions, mistakes and accountability, music lyrics sang ragefully, and support by people that saw me, risks in vulnerability that I learned to take in relationally. The shame that was never mine to begin with began to dissipate and be held by integration of nature and its cycles. 

So, when we consider sexual development among folks who did not receive the most legit sexual education or parental guidance or even robust sense of community or belonging, or have lived experiences of violence, I wonder about possibilities that go beyond the parameters of monolithic hetero-normative constructs of how our experiences should be, how we should heal, how healthy development ought to look, and move towards imagination beyond capitalistic, purity-cultured, binary- gendered ideals. What would it have been like for me to meet myself with fluidity and compassion, helping to land more softly in the turbulence of puberty? What would it have looked like to have a community that said, there is nothing wrong with me or anyone that does not fit into the patriarchal trappings of sexuality and gender identity?

There were strengths and gifts co-created from the obstacles of my period, like storytelling and resourcing support with helpers I met and learned trust with along the way. What was uncertain and feared became a source of deep healing and place to lean into, with people who reflect reciprocity and mutual care. It took time to get there. Most of all I learned about my cultural rituals that celebrate periods, and learned from the people that resisted gendered norms in my cultures and family including my own grandmother, who passed away unfairly at the age of 44 due to gendered-based negligence in an authoritarian country during a political and religious revolution. I began learning about her story and who she was, the values she stayed true to, and how she resisted the imposition of patriarchal hegemonic standards in our homeland during the historical changes that unfolded.

I eventually came out as Queer and began to relax into my experiences. The process was like rebirthing over and over, to find footing, only to learn that life doesn’t guarantee certainty. But that it can be approached with play and adventure. Courage was co-created with the people that saw me as whole, awkwardness and mistakes celebrated and all. We did not fit into a box, and never needed to, and it did not make my developmental history or anyone else’s a failure. Especially for survivors of violence. If we can move beyond pathology in development history for folks that are gender non-conforming or express sexuality in fluid ways, the possibilities to imagine beyond trapping binaries of success and failure become tangible. The values and communal healings flourish. And that each person deserves dignity, compassion, and safety from political violence, especially while developing and growing. That relational care is radical care, and that the failure of the systems was never ours to internalize. Then compassion and realizations that you were never broken to begin with bloom with possibilities and celebrations.

I wrote this in celebration of all unique stories that are, and have yet to be, celebrated in community. In dedication to all the Queer, Trans, LGBTQIA+ folks who are or were ever made to feel shame for being different, or not quite fitting into the boxes that were never designed for these communities in the first place. That it’s possible to heal and repair and live in ways that express genuine care and desire to live life fully, relationally, and communally.