On Bringing Your Whole Self to Work
By Anonymous
I sit in the “collaboration space” surrounded by my colleagues and peers.
The session’s facilitators have the flip chart paper and pens on the tables and the digital screen looms.
“We’re here to talk about bringing your whole self to work, being inclusive and how to be supportive allies!”, the room applauds, my heart races, palms go sticky.
I can’t tell any of these people what has happened in my life that makes me shiver when told I need to be a “supportive ally” and why bringing my “whole self” to work could put my job in jeopardy in the current climate. I love my job, I’m good at it, and it helps keep me sane.
I sit through the spiel about how we are there to bring an authentic experience to our customers, so we need to be authentic and celebrate the diversity in our community and our workplace.
My beautiful autistic daughter decided 6 years ago that she was “really a boy”. I now know she was likely suffering from Adolescent Onset Gender Dysphoria, a condition that is fully treatable with therapeutic support and has been successfully treated this way for decades. But in the past few years, the approach has changed to a fully medicalised approach even though there is little to no research that supports this treatment path. We tried to give her space to explore her feelings and grow through them, but as soon as she was 18 she was given a prescription for testosterone after two 1-hour sessions with a psychiatrist and within the year had used her savings to go to a private clinic to have her breasts removed. None of the medical and therapeutic practitioners took into account her autism or her body dysmorphia, there was no ongoing support. The money was taken, surgeries done and she was dropped like a stone, back into the world, with only her family and online cheerleaders for support.
By this time my husband and I had become her enemies in her mind because we saw that none of these changes had made her happier. In fact, her social network had got smaller and her enthusiasm for all the hobbies and interests she once had was gone. She was existing, not living and it was causing us all to grieve for the past. She ran away and hasn’t spoken to us for over 2 years and we miss her deeply.
So my “whole self” is a tumble of cold fury and impotent rage at the medical and therapeutic “professionals” who didn’t see my whole child, who were only led by being “inclusive” when they should have been led by the medical tenet First Do No Harm. I’m disgusted by the anonymous online cheerleaders who made her believe that they were “supportive allies”, but who disappeared when all the things they told her would make her happier made her so much sadder.
So I sit in the “collaboration space” and let the chatter wash over me as I suppress the urge to stand up and scream “They hurt my child, they hurt my family and you’re all clapping”. I’m not included, I’m not supported, but I am my whole self, it’s just not the whole self their slide show wants to see.
Photo by kate.sade on Unsplash
Genspect publishes a variety of authors with different perspectives. Any opinions expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect Genspect’s official position.