The Moment I Knew I Was Different and How I’ve Evolved Every Day Since

Karlyn Steadman
Team Coach
New Albany, OH
Pronouns: They/Them

My identity over time
When I was a kid, I identified as a tomboy. The youngest of 3 daughters, I was the one who played every sport from dance, to cheer and even played football up until my first year of high school, and yes, softball (but you probably already guessed that). I would go through phases of short and long hair. I didn’t bother much with dating, it was too much work. Really, I just didn’t want to admit to myself that I had feelings for people who I thought (at the time) were the same gender as me.

Come high school, I knew I was different. I learned more about what it meant to be a lesbian and could easily identify with that label. Even still, I forced myself to show up as female. What I was learning, through school and the new-to-the-time popularity of social media, was that there wasn’t anything that described me fully. I didn’t want to wear dresses, or skirts. And wasn’t a huge fan of how my body was changing. So I would hide myself in hoodies and baggy clothes and explored the more masculine side of myself.

My relationship with myself and my identity
The ever-changing sliding scales of gender and sexual orientation can be difficult to navigate if you aren’t taught that it can be ever-changing. This is especially true for those that are taught that their religion or culture has a bias against the LGBTQIA+ community, which can cause a looming feeling of homophobia and ultimately self-hate. This certainly was part of what shaped my growth into who I am today.

Yes, I wish I could change my past. I think that it’s important to remember that I do still love my family, and have decided to speak to my past pains as an opportunity to grow. But I do recognize that the pain I grew up in could have been avoided, and that I will spend my life dedicated to creating the most affirming space I can so others don’t experience what I did. I simply was taught to hate myself.

I knew I was a lesbian as soon as I knew what the word meant. I don’t remember a time that I could identify as anything but that. At that same moment, I learned the name for the feelings I had for other people, I also learned it was a “sin” according to my family’s religion, or, specifically, an “abomination” as was taught every Sunday. From that moment, I felt as if I was an abomination. From five years old until the age of 15, I forced myself into a box, carefully suppressing those feelings. When I was 15 years old, I was caught with my partner at the time and forced to go through conversion therapy. I built up more layers of hate for myself, all while navigating the feelings of being non-binary and different from the female I was being forced to be.

Navigating a corporate environment
Knowing how to navigate a professional work environment as a male or a female is learned— from binary dress codes, to learning how to navigate proper etiquette based off your birth gender. But what do you do if you don’t fall in the binary?

As someone who doesn’t fall under the binary gender umbrella, it was always difficult to know how to navigate those norms. After my first year of college, I was a chef. I kept to myself and always made sure I worked somewhere where the uniforms were the same. I always chose a unisex cut chef’s coat. But after leaving the industry, I was thrown into the business world without guidance on what to do.