I’ve been reflecting on the idea of freedom lately and it what it really means to be free. It’s the time of year when many of us in the United States celebrate various kinds of freedom-Juneteenth-the day that all slaves were finally free in America; The Fourth of July-the day that our country marks its independence; and even summer break-a time for school aged children (and their teachers) to be free from the structure of academic life for a few months of sun and fun. These events all mark a collective freedom; one that is given to a group of people. I have been reflecting on individual freedom and how one finds and creates that for themselves.
Those of us who identify as Gen Xers, probably can relate to being free in the world as a child, roaming the streets on our bikes, not getting home until the streetlights came on and the lightning bugs emerged. We were what was called latchkey kids. We carried our house keys latched to us so we could let ourselves in after school while our parents were still at work. It was an amazingly free time. We could just be out and about as if we didn’t have a care in the world. It was as if no one really cared what we were doing. You know it’s bad when the television has to break in with a message to parents saying “it’s 10pm, do you know where your children are?” Google it if you don’t believe me. We have become known as the last feral generation. But many of us can also relate to not having a lot of options for how to BE in the world. The culture of life had a very heteronormative gendered tint to it. We weren’t exploring our sexual and gender identities. We might not have even fully known anyone who openly identified as any one of the LGBTQIA letters. I'm sure this may be hard for some to grasp but, it’s true. It just wasn’t discussed and if it was, it was done so quietly and/or with judgment. It wasn’t a time to freely express yourself. Don’t get me wrong, many of us, including myself, were expressing ourselves through our fashion and musical choices. I had a lot of brightly colored charm bracelets and earrings and neon t-shirts juxtaposed against my posters of Bon Jovi and Whitesnake ripped right out of the middle of my heavy metal magazines! Fashion and music aside, a lot of us were conforming or hiding.
In my therapy practice, I specialize in working with people coming out later in life-primarily women, but also people who are coming out as transgender and non-binary. I also work with a lot of clients who are simply trying to figure out who they are and how they actually want to live their life. A lot of my clients tend to be Gen X and fit the description above. We were all sort of given scripts-whether explicitly or implicitly-on what was required: finish high school, don’t get pregnant, don’t do drugs, go to college, get a good job, get married, have kids and then retire at age 65. That’s it. But what a lot of us came to realize was that we felt trapped. We went from being feral to domesticated. We have had to figure out how to be free again.
So, what does freedom look like for a middle-age Gen Xer?
I recently spoke with a 50 something year old black woman who came out at the age of 41 after being married to a man. About a year ago, she decided to pick up and move from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Savannah, Georgia to fulfill her dream of living near a beach. Even though she was in a committed relationship she moved there alone, just her and her dog. She described how she had spent so much of her life living for other people, her ex-husband, her children, her employer, that she just wanted to make a decision that focused on what she wanted to do and how she wanted to live her life. In the process, she also quite her longstanding job and decided to retire early focusing now just on being an adjunct professor. She found her freedom.
One of my clients* is beginning to explore the ways in which she can redefine her marriage with her husband so that she can be her full self. After years of therapy and doing the hard vulnerable work of coming out to herself in her early 40’s, she has realized and accepted that just because she is a wife with children, doesn’t mean that she has to identify as straight. She can be a black, queer identified person in a mixed orientation relationship. Her and her husband can design their relationship to fit their exact needs, not the requirements that were imposed upon them by family and society. That can look like a relationship in which they practice polyamory. Where they have clear and open communication that allows her to explore her sexuality safely and continue to evolve as a fully self-actualized human being. She doesn’t have to present in a feminine way all the time. She doesn’t have to wear high heel shoes and dresses to events. She can play with her gender expression and wear the clothes that represent all of who she is and how she feels on the inside which sometimes means wearing a nicely fitted suit, tie and fully beat face of makeup. She doesn’t have to conform to gender norms that have had her feeling stuck and stifled for years. She is learning to move freely in the world again.
I have been coaching one of my clients* on how to explore her sexuality as a recently divorced 50 something bisexual woman. That’s the professional way of saying ‘I'm teaching her how to have a ho phase!’ We spent months unpacking the various ways and reasons why her sexuality had been repressed over the years. We worked on forgiveness. Forgiving herself for not knowing how to be present in her body, for not knowing how to prioritize her pleasure and how this could have impacted her marriage. Now single, she is navigating the world of dating apps and sex positive events exploring kinks that she had only fantasized about not knowing that there was a whole community of folks who had the same fantasies as she does. She released herself from domestication and has returned to the wild.
So, what does freedom really mean?
In my book, Untangled: A Black Woman’s Journey to Personal, Spiritual and Sexual Freedom, I describe freedom as “a way of being in the world that recognizes and honors one’s whole person without self-judgment…a multi-faceted state of mind…living a genuine and authentic life that you have reclaimed…” The stories above are just a few of the ways in which us Gen Xers are honoring our whole selves and living a genuine and authentic life free of the scripts that we were given. We are healing from our traumas (and there were plenty). We are making peace with our pasts and making our way back to our independent, creative, responsible, fun yet more fully actualized selves. We are finding our freedom in the journey of coming out later in life, be it as lesbian, queer, polyamorous, non-binary or simply as a sexual person giving yourself the permission to be a sexual person. As we observe this season of summer celebrations, ask yourself: do I feel free?
*Details have been changed to protect client confidentiality
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