The Kindness Thread

[Lydia_R]

Being on this site and in my early transition, I find myself focusing on kindness.  Being kind to myself especially.  Accepting of my desires and goals.  Sometimes transitioning seems like total insanity, but the one thing I know is that I want this.  There is no why.

 

I just have this fantasy about my future self.  It's something to work towards.  To give motion to my life.  I made progress last week.  Things are coming along.  I wore my red Star Trek dress yesterday and I'm wearing my black skirt and rust colored ribbed sweater today.  I'm feeling good.  I've developed a better body shaving routine this week.  My new job has got me in a more regular weekday/weekend routine.  I'm shaving my upper body on Friday evening and my lower body on Saturday morning.  Smooth!  I got my initial blood work done to start HRT.  Making an appointment with the transgender medical doctor for the first time now.  Scoping out the electrolysis shops.  It appears there is a selection in Portland!  Go figure!

 

There is no why, only kindness...

[Jani]

1 hour ago, Lydia_R said:

Being on this site and in my early transition, I find myself focusing on kindness.  Being kind to myself especially.

This is important Lydia.  The old adage about loving oneself before you can love others is true.  We need to take care of ourselves and treat ourselves kindly.  With our minds free we can think of others.

 

It seems like life is going well and you have settled into a nice routine.  Best of luck on finding a good electrologist.  If the first one doesn't click, try another.  And don't fear the pain.  Its not a lifetimes worth.

 

 Hugs, 
Jani

[Susan R]

9 hours ago, Lydia_R said:

I just have this fantasy about my future self.  It's something to work towards.  To give motion to my life.  I made progress last week.  Things are coming along.

 

I got my initial blood work done to start HRT.  Making an appointment with the transgender medical doctor for the first time now.  Scoping out the electrolysis shops.

Hi @Lydia_R! That’s the nice thing about transition, It all about doing what we thought always just a fantasy earlier in our lives and making it a reality. I’ve said it here before…it’s a very exciting time in your transition. I’m sure in a few years you’ll be looking back at this time and smiling about all your breakthroughs and milestones achieved. But becoming your true self is in itself the greatest reward. That will pay dividends every morning when you wake up.

 

It seems you’re doing some very good things for yourself, making some progress forward in your transition and know that you deserve it. Don’t let anyone discourage you. Just be you and like you say…Be kind to yourself.

 

*Hugs*

Susan R🌷

[Lydia_R]

Meditating on Guanyin, the goddess of kindness and compassion this morning.

[Michelle_Anne]

On 4/4/2022 at 5:07 AM, Susan R said:

Hi @Lydia_R! That’s the nice thing about transition, It all about doing what we thought always just a fantasy earlier in our lives and making it a reality. I’ve said it here before…it’s a very exciting time in your transition. I’m sure in a few years you’ll be looking back at this time and smiling about all your breakthroughs and milestones achieved. But becoming your true self is in itself the greatest reward. That will pay dividends every morning when you wake up.

 

It seems you’re doing some very good things for yourself, making some progress forward in your transition and know that you deserve it. Don’t let anyone discourage you. Just be you and like you say…Be kind to yourself.

 

*Hugs*

Susan R🌷

So true 

[Lydia_R]

The seed thought I had about the title of this thread has to do with my language and how I relate to others.  I'm not too happy with the way I've been communicating on this board.  It has to do with an intellectual superiority attitude that I think I inherited from both of my parents.  I've had some hard won battles in my life that I'm proud of and want to share.  But I get the feeling that talking about these things turns people off.  Like talking about how I lost 60 pounds and that I weigh 135.  That was insanely difficult to do.  Intellectually, I want other people to know that it is possible and share some of the tactics I used in my battle.

 

But for a lot of people, doing something like that is practically impossible.  I think "it's never too late" is a terrible phrase.  Some things are just downright impossible, especially when you get older and time works against you.

 

"...and when we were wrong promptly admitted it."  The one concept that I've taken from AA, is this idea of inventory.  For me, I realize that I have an elitist attitude and that it isolates me.  And I realize that changing it could be quite difficult.  Experience has shown me that this could be a 5-10 year journey to solve this problem.

 

Part of me is scared about opening up and allowing more people into my life.  I kind of enjoy the beginning of Superman II now.  "Even on Krypton there were these antisocial elements."

 

I want to be more kind to others and I know there is more to it than holding the door open for them.  I like my alone time, but I want to have dinner parties in the future.  It's something I think is worth working on. 

[Astrid]

26 minutes ago, Lydia_R said:

I want to be more kind to others and I know there is more to it than holding the door open for them. 

 

So true.  As has often been said, the true character of someone is how they act when they think no one else is looking.

Being intentionally kind, not just to friends and work colleagues, but to strangers (not just wait staff in restaurants and sales assistants in stores, but to others who look and perhaps believe differently from us) is rewarding for all. But it can be hard to do.   There's a ton of material in the form of online resources and books on the subject of intentional kindness.  I'll be the first to admit that I could benefit from a refresher about kindness.  Kindness often results in a win-win for all, and that is something we need a lot more of in these times.

 

Hugs,

 

Astrid

[Lydia_R]

The problem I'm struggling with here is Pride, which is certainly on topic in this forum.  I've spent the last week being very upset about the last post that I made.  I came to the idea that talking about this is a bit of a taboo subject.

 

I spent the last week visiting my aunt.  She literally cured herself of cancer.  She had a large tumor (50 years ago) and the doctors were discussing with her about how to cut it out and the radiation and all that.  She decided not to do any of that and then she took an intensive holistic healing course.  She changed her diet and lifestyle and the tumor just went away.

 

And her whole life revolves around that.  She's of course proud of that and when I am with her, it is always the main topic of conversation, partially because I am interested in it too.  And in my life, I have how I educated myself into an engineering career while living on the streets and my thing with losing 30% of my body weight.

 

I'm proud of my success.  The things I learned are what I know about and want to share with people.  They are a source of pride.  And there is the saying that "Pride cometh before the fall."  It can be hard to listen to someone who is really prideful talk about something.  And I've been getting super sensitive about it lately.

 

It can be a thing of sounding like you are better than someone else.  And it has elements of competitiveness.  And brings up the idea of Show Don't Tell.  Is the solution to just not bring it up?  I do understand that the best way for me to be more social would be to show more interest in other people by asking questions.  And I am, TOTALLY interested in other people.  I want to hear their stories and I feel that people in general don't share enough intimate details about their lives.

 

I do realize that I can come on strong.  I tend to do that musically too.  I'm fairly ashamed of how loud I used to play back in high school.  I aim to be more sensitive, which brings us back to Pride.  How sensitive should I be?  Is it my business what others think of me?  It certainly does affect me.  If I am always turning people off and driving them away from me, it'll likely start affecting what kind of work I can get which comes back to money, which is vitally important.  We are social creatures.  We all use language.

 

I do have a way of overthinking things.  "Intellectual superiority" was a poor choice of words.  I'm certainly intellectual though.  Lately I've been wanting to buy a textbook on social economics.  I'm interested in how the environments we live in affect our behaviors.

 

Thanks for your thoughtful post Astrid.  "intentional kindness" is a good keyword to research.  I'm also interested in what others have to say about Pride and how that relates to kindness.

 

 

 

 

[DonkeySocks]

41 minutes ago, Lydia_R said:

It can be a thing of sounding like you are better than someone else.

The someone else you are proud of being better than is you, yesterday.

[Lydia_R]

Yes, competition with yourself is the only way to go.

 

It can be bad to beat people over the head with a message, but the flip side can be not saying anything of substance.

[Lydia_R]

The search that I'm doing now is "hard to talk with a prideful person."  And that brings up the subject of arrogance.  For me, I've been telling this story of how I educated myself while I was on the streets for almost two decades.  I've been very proud of that and perhaps rightfully so.  I didn't reach much of a state of humility while I was on the streets.

 

But after a couple decades, I've become a broken record about it.  Ultimately I'm just like millions of other people who got an education.

 

It can be hard to talk with my aunt.  She plays the roll of authority on healthy living.  How can I justify baking scones to her?  I made these fresh scones with blueberries from my yard for the first time last week and it was about the coolest thing ever.  You simply have not experienced a scone unless you've gotten one fresh out of the oven.  But that isn't health food.  She is my family and I realize how similar I am to her with my pride issues.  It can be taxing talking with her as I know it can be taxing talking with me.  Her health journey has shaped her life like how my street education shaped mine.  It's what we know, love and talk about.

 

Anyway.  The family aspect of it is interesting.

 

In that search, I see this:

 

Quote

Arrogance creates interpersonal distance and is defined by the Cambridge dictionary as "the quality of being unpleasantly proud and behaving as if you are more important than, or know more than, other people.”

 

"upleasantly proud"  I think is what I'm getting at with my posts this week.  I think it would be fun to make an Unpleasantville movie that is the opposite of Pleasantville.  It's not that my pride isn't justified or that I don't have good things to say about the subjects I talk about.  But I realize that the way I can talk brings out that "know it all" feeling in the same way that I get when talking with my aunt.  My experience is that this can be a tough habit to break.  Hence the 5-10 year journey that I mentioned previously.  How do I go about changing a behavior like this?  Simply keeping my mouth shut doesn't really do anything to solve the problem.

 

It's the Show Don't Tell thing.  People have to unwrap these things themselves.  No one wants an authority telling them how to be.  And it's the old dog and the new trick.  Woof!

[Lydia_R]

And then a search for "how to overcome arrogance" comes up with: Treat yourself and others with greater kindness.  And that certainly gets back to my original thought with this thread.

[CD Rachel]

Hi Lydia, Hope you don't mind if I chime in here. I recently (today) wanted to define just who is Rachel. So in my logical way I made a list. It was rather extensive but the was an immediate pattern that stood out. Most of the things that I had high on my list just simply equate to being kind. Words like supportive, caring, helpful, and friendly. These seem like great attributes that i wish to strive for but they are all just blunt instruments that are unwieldly unless guided by wisdom and compassion. Kindness flows from compassion. With out compassion I do not see how I can be the things that I want to be as Rachel.  I found compassion defined as the following in a google search:

 

 

Compassion literally means “to suffer together.” Among emotion researchers, it is defined as the feeling that arises when you are confronted with another's suffering and feel motivated to relieve that suffering.

 

 

To me I see the essence of femininity as love. Having a love of my self and a love for others. As I transition new aspects of myself are emerging. It is my hope and desire that Rachel is a much better person, more loving, caring, supportive, and nurturing then R@#$ (dead name). What a unique opportunity I see before me. I am doing more than just changing my gender. I am becoming the best possible version of myself that I can be. 

 

Just my 2 cents on the topic.

 

~Rachel

 

[Davie]

6 hours ago, CD Rachel said:

To me I see the essence of femininity as love. Having a love of my self and a love for others. As I transition new aspects of myself are emerging. It is my hope and desire that Rachel is a much better person, more loving, caring, supportive, and nurturing then R@#$ (dead name). What a unique opportunity I see before me. I am doing more than just changing my gender. I am becoming the best possible version of myself that I can be.

How valuable are these words? They could save the world.

Bless you, @CD Rachel.

💜

Davie

[stveee]

i recognized early things that could ease social transition is simply smiling more and being kind.

We get occupied with passing and politics, but in the end most people remember how you made them feel.

I lived a life of invisibility and attempted neutrality of just ghosting myself, but in trying to be the best Me, that had to end and I have to be proactive in the practice in character development.

Mostly I was afraid of projecting kindness out of fear of rejection. I had to get over that fear right away.

In the end, it's about fear, and I think most trans people wake up and face all kinds of fear every day. 

"Using honey instead of vinegar" is the old saying. Dopamine and Oxytocin are not to be underestimated. If people can associate you with feeling good, this can even supercede the rational frontal lobe, and most people like to feel good, and feel good helping others feel good. 

 

[Heather Shay]

@stveee so well said. Thank you - I really needed to read this, this morning.

[Davie]

5 hours ago, Heather Shay said:

@stveee so well said. Thank you - I really needed to read this, this morning.

Ditto on this from Heather Shay. Well said and I wholly agree.

— Davie

[StephieGurl]

On 4/3/2022 at 7:09 PM, Lydia_R said:

Being on this site and in my early transition, I find myself focusing on kindness.  Being kind to myself especially.  Accepting of my desires and goals.  Sometimes transitioning seems like total insanity, but the one thing I know is that I want this.  There is no why.

 

I just have this fantasy about my future self.  It's something to work towards.  To give motion to my life.  I made progress last week.  Things are coming along.  I wore my red Star Trek dress yesterday and I'm wearing my black skirt and rust colored ribbed sweater today.  I'm feeling good.  I've developed a better body shaving routine this week.  My new job has got me in a more regular weekday/weekend routine.  I'm shaving my upper body on Friday evening and my lower body on Saturday morning.  Smooth!  I got my initial blood work done to start HRT.  Making an appointment with the transgender medical doctor for the first time now.  Scoping out the electrolysis shops.  It appears there is a selection in Portland!  Go figure!

 

There is no why, only kindness...

Wish you success. Kindness and niceness are the beginning of my personal ethical approach when I am dealing with others. Of course, it is an ideal, so can't always say I am nice to everyone all the time. But, when it comes to myself I might overlook myself more than anyone.