Rhino Ramblings

Rhino Mask

“Well, we all have a face
That we hide away forever
And we take them out
And show ourselves
When everyone has gone

Some are satin, some are steel
Some are silk, and some are leather
They’re the faces of the stranger
But we love to try them on”

Billy Joel “The Stranger”

I participated in a Fireside Chat with Janel and moderated by Daphne (without permission to include their full names, I will stick with first names) at the Women in Tech USA conference last week.  Daphne was wonderful, moving the conversation along and Janel was engaging and fascinating and insightful.  The chat, in my opinion, was a balanced back and forth discussion on inclusion and diversity and managing staff using HI (Human Intelligence) that leverages technology rather than managing technology using AI to leverage humans. That is not what this blog is about (perhaps another time).  The start of the session, as is the norm, was intro time.  I have 2 variations of my bio for an intro.  One is professional only; and the other includes my personal journey along with the professional one.  For this particular intro, Daphne simply asked us each to intro ourselves.  Janel went first and, quite frankly, I was blown away by her experiences and dedication to encouraging and propagating inclusion in all of its forms in the workplace.  I felt that even if I were to go a bit into my personal journey particularly in terms of transitioning on the job in the 90’s, I would be left with the question “ So what”.  A response to Who am I such as Janel gave, describes not just her own life story but also how she succeeded in providing a professional leadership based on inclusion and acceptance of what each staff and co-worker brought to the job at hand.  The profound, life-changing experience that I could point to, really lay dormant for 20 plus years , so begged the question of whether my bio supported my participating as an expert on the topic.  Notably, once we left the history behind and discussed current styles and experiences, I was very comfortable with the professional story.  However, I had lost the clear opportunity to add the personal wrinkle to that fireside chat.

Let’s backtrack a minute.  When I was first asked to speak, I was going to be the sole speaker for 30 minutes.  I wrote the abstract and had planned to provide a mixture of my various personal and professional faces.  When the format was switched, my focus also had to change. 

All of which struck me as a question of “Who am I?”  With the answer being that I am sometimes one part of me, sometimes another and rarely do I let others see “a face That we hide away forever.”

I believe we all have those times when we answer “Who am I” differently based on the environs in which the question is posed.  Incorporating faces and facets of ourselves that had previously been hidden away can be liberating and enlightening and scary and perhaps even traumatizingly personal. When I started this blog I was never planning on discussing the transgerderism in my life.  My bio did not mention it and none of my topics early on alluded to that major aspect of my life. In my current About Me page, I am fully open on that front.  And, of course, some of my blogs are focused or at least in part on LGBTQIA+ in and around my life.  In more instances then the past, “Who am I” is overtly stated in terms including, Program Manager, Liberal, single white female, transgendered, Baba (grandmother), etc.  There are still, of course, other faces which are still a stranger to most, and often, all around me.   I strive to hide the depression based side of me.  That stranger face has been shared only to my closest friends who I have leaned on when life came to a stop (not literally – but in the sense of being unable to “operate” mentally and physically).  Mostly I refuse to answer “How are you doing”, I think in part, because I cannot handle the emotional fracturing that would be needed for me to truly articulate a response.

Okay – back to the question at hand – “Who am I?” and the fireside chat bio – while I felt I was right to stick only to the professional, I also feel I would have been right and maybe even righter if I had included that my management skillset was and is clearly defined in part based on my trans journey.  To be quite honest, part of my reluctance was due to my personal withdrawal from participating in that storyline for, literally, decades (everyone around me was participating in it – I was just refusing to accept the role that was me).  Now that I have accepted the fullness of my life as it was, is and will be influenced by all of those faces – familiar and stranger – I now face the reality of several key points:

1. If there is anything of interest in my life to share, then I need to recognize and be inclusive of both my professional career and growth and my personal journey particularly in regard to my trans-journey.  I may not, myself, always understand or appreciate how the professional and personal influence a successful life,  I have been exceedingly fortunate to experience where that life has taken me.
2. I am who I am.  And that is the best and maybe only answer to “Who am I”

The roles I play outwardly can only be best understood  if I not just “show ourselves
When everyone has gone”. I need to show that stranger when everyone is here.