The Mountain
Our potential is limited only by which mountains we are willing to climb.
On Monday, I went to movie night with my new friends, and it was an amazing evening. I’m realizing I somehow stumbled into a really genuine, beautiful group of people. They’re real, they’re open, and they’re kind.
Somehow I’m the youngest in the room.
Before we started the movie (we watched Moulin Rouge), one of the girls said, “we should go around the room and each share something interesting about ourselves—I want to get to know you better!”
It was a breath of fresh air. She shared a draft of a song she wrote and recorded, and we all tried to convince her to release it on Spotify that very evening. Another girl sang the lyrics of a song she’s writing. Both shares were beautiful, authentic, and vulnerable. Others shared details from their lives, and there was lots of energetic conversation, laughter, and spontaneous singing. Theatre kids, amirite? I love these people already.
I played my song MOUNTAIN, which is about the time I had a spiritual awakening on a hiking trip with some friends in Oregon back in 2021 and realized I was a girl. Some people in the trans community refer to that moment as the “egg cracking”. I love that. I also call it “coming out to myself”.
Coming out is often a powerful and life-altering experience in the queer community, typically centered on disclosing an aspect of our authentic identity to those around us. It takes courage and vulnerability, like sharing your music in a room full of people you met last week at a karaoke bar. But what is often not discussed is what has to unfold on a soul level in order to even be able to come out to others.
One of the biggest questions that people have asked me regarding coming out as a woman is, how did you know?
That’s what MOUNTAIN is about. It’s not an explanation—that would make for insufferably boring art. Rather, it’s a depiction of my experience in that moment at the top of the mountain as the sun was beginning to set that chilly day in January.
In fact, the lyrics (performed as spoken word) are an excerpt from an attempt I made earlier this year to convey my experience in writing. I’d like to share that attempt, unabridged, below. Please keep in mind that words can barely do the experience justice, only paint an impression. I do suggest listening to the song before or after reading the following section, because the music adds a lot. :-)
Without further adieu:
The Mountain (unabridged)
She awoke on the mountain, alone.
The treetops and pastel skies met in kaleidoscoping technicolor below her, and she remembered.
She remembered what she had managed to forget her whole life.
In quiet waking moments and yearnings from the other side of the glass lost to time, she had caught glimpses.
But now she remembered. All of it.
Every last detail of the life she knew she was meant to live.
Granted, none of it had happened yet. Not as far as she knew. Not in her linear sense of time.
But as she imagined her future, she would learn creation as an act of remembrance.
As she remembered, she created. As she created, she remembered.
Everything swirling in the breeze. Not debris. Not chaos. But everything—the sum of the cosmos—swirling together. Dancing. Touching fingertips. Kissing.
And everything remembered who she was.
Alone, at the top of the mountain, everything finally made sense. She made sense for the first time, to herself. The earthy, dark, damp flavor of her soul seeped down the pinnacle like a native fog. She could feel the universe breaking open inside her, and her soul breathing through the cracks.
For the first time that she could remember, her shell was gone. The glass wall was broken.
Nothing truly “made sense” to her anymore. Her mind was preoccupied, and maybe that was the magical missing piece. She could finally feel it, it wasn’t all just in her head after all.
She was alone. There was no one else on the mountain with her, for a moment so heavy in the totality of its penetrating beauty that it seemed to dip out of time altogether.
It wasn’t like before. The faint glimpses, the distant aching. The incessant feeling that something was missing. Unlike then, it was here and now, finally. She was finally here and now.
All her life, she had secretly resented herself for succumbing to the expectations of those around her.
She felt born entrapped in a web of “love” that never came without strings attached.
And for the first time in her life, she was catching a glimpse of herself. Beyond her body, which she hated, and her mind, which she hated, and her spirit, which was always heavy.
Her Soul.
She had known awhile ago, deep down, that it was time to lay down for the last time. To be reclaimed and repurposed by Mother Earth. Whatever—and whoever—rose from the ashes would be blessed knowing its birth came from a willingness to die in order to be brought more fully alive.
She was blessed.
Here’s me—from that day on the mountain in 2021, to summer 2025.
The Aftermath (The Trail Is Filthy)
That moment on the mountain set me on a path to scale an even greater mountain—the mountain within.
My experience that day raised far more questions than answers in the hours, days, and months that followed. I remember getting back from the hike, and while all my friends were in the other room partying (as they should have been, it was a friend’s birthday trip), I was in the other room frantically trying to put words to what I had just experienced. I still have that document saved somewhere.
Later in 2021, I self-accepted as a transgender woman, and I came out around Christmas. Being “trans” was a label that really scared me at the time, despite it being the most accurate description of my experience. The stigma in our society associated with the idea of someone born and raised to “be a man” embracing their femininity is a profoundly heavy reality to navigate at first.
The years that followed included being ostracized from my family, losing touch with many of my old friends, recurrent housing insecurity, a short stint living in a van in California with an abusive narcissist and two cats, substance dependency & addiction, lots of risky and deeply unsatisfying sexual encounters with men, and multiple codependent relationships with women—all while remaining largely avoidant of my disability and its effect on my life.
There was a time late in 2022 when I thought I wouldn’t make it, and I ended up in a mental hospital. I was living alone for the first time in my life, I hadn’t started medically transitioning yet, and I had a terrible relationship with myself (if that wasn’t already abundantly clear).
With the help of antidepressants and wisdom from a book I found in the commons room at the hospital (it’s sitting on my desk right now), my life and my relationship with myself began trending upward. Slowly, but surely.
It felt like climbing a mountain. Many days, the summit was far from view. The weather ranged widely, as did the quality of the trail. There were times I was sure I would lose my footing entirely and injure myself so badly I could climb no higher. There were sunny, warm days with birds singing in the trees. There was snow. There was rain, mud, blood, sweat, and tears. In short, the trail was as filthy as it was beautiful.
I’m speaking metaphorically, of course. This was an inner journey. Another metaphor I appreciate for this experience is that of unearthing a treasure. Self-help culture tends to teach us we’re missing some fundamental piece of ourselves, and we need to find it in order to fix ourselves.
That’s simply not the case. In reality, healing and learning to love ourselves in the wake of traumatic experiences is a process of removing blockages. The treasure is inside us, and it always has been. It’s most evident when we are children—temporarily unscathed by the hardships of life and the generational trauma passed down through our lineage.
As we grow up, we are conditioned into our family’s way of moving through the world. We are repressed—told we must not allow our heart’s treasure to be seen. A grave is dug, and our treasure is unceremoniously thrust into the bowels of the earth and covered in dirt.
When we become adults, we have the opportunity to unearth it again, and this is what healing is. This is what alchemy is. This is the first step of spiritual awakening. We are given the opportunity to reclaim our innocence, but not without getting our hands dirty first.
Many people are afraid of the dirt. In our society, we’re told that the grime itself is our problem. That’s called shame, and it’s part of our repression. We look at our reflection, see we are covered in muck, and we think we must be made of it, failing to acknowledge the courage it takes to get on our knees and dig until our fingers bleed in search of a treasure we may barely even remember.
Western society is obsessed with being clean, pristine, and perfect. But this is fool’s gold. It’s a performance to hide the fact we have no idea where we lost our treasure or how to start looking for it.
But for those who are not deterred by the appearance of being covered in filth, who dig deeper and deeper still, the treasure is eventually uncovered. And once it is found, it is undeniable. It shines brighter, it lasts forever, and it cannot be stolen, unlike the many masks and facades we all wear at some point on our journey.
My journey has been filthy. My ancestors were even filthier, and I honor them for their courage to seek that which was buried in our lineage ages ago, so I could have a better chance than them of reaching it in my lifetime.
Let it be known, the importance of a willingness to become filthy in order to find that which was buried. Without it, we wander from mask to mask, as we continue to feel emptier and emptier of that which makes us human. This is the myth of the shapeshifter and the vampire. We lose what makes us human, so we put on a mask to hide our ravenous hunger for others’ treasure, because we have bought the lie we are devoid of our own—simply because we refuse to dig.
This year, nearly 5 years after that day on the mountain in Oregon, I struck gold. I don’t know how to explain it. I am on the verge of being homeless once more, I was betrayed by those I thought I could trust, yet my vessel is overflowing with abundance like liquid gold in my veins.
I am finally here and now. And NO ONE and NO THING can take that away from me.
Not pain, not the unknown, not the judgment of others’ masks for the filth I encountered on my trail up the mountain.
My treasure is here. My birthright is here. I have dug, and dug, and dug, and dug, and dug for years. And finally, with the guidance of my ancestors, I have found that radiant treasure which was once lost in my lineage.
I have reached the top of this mountain. And someday, there will be another summit I will lay my eyes on and dream of what the world looks like from the top of it. But for now, this is an incredible view. I’m going to sit here awhile and enjoy the warmth in my heart as I watch the treetops and pastel skies meet in kaleidoscoping technicolor below me.