#lifestory — Public Fediverse posts

Banking to Green - Becoming an Energy Efficiency Nerd (2017) - Learn how I got from Lehman Brothers investment banking IT to solar PV and storage bothering, 10 years in... #lifeStory #optimisation - https://www.earth.org.uk/Optimising-from-Banking-to-Energy.html

I watched her love that not-quite-a-pig with her whole face, and I realized I wasn't wishing she'd stay this way.

I was wishing I could remember how. #lifestory

Anna has now told everyone in the house that she got mail. She still can't tell you one word it said.

That's not the letter failing. That's the letter working exactly as designed.

I'm still learning to aim that well. #lifestory

I'm the one with the bigger hands now.

I want to be that quiet about it.

Some days I am. Some days I still want someone to know I did the other ninety-six. #lifestory

Banking to Green - Becoming an Energy Efficiency Nerd (2017) - Learn how I got from Lehman Brothers investment banking IT to solar PV and storage bothering, 10 years in... #lifeStory #optimisation - https://www.earth.org.uk/Optimising-from-Banking-to-Energy.html

AGED FIVE, I GOT
FAR ENOUGH AWAY TO SEE 💎

When I was about five years old, I spent two years in a children’s sanatorium.

At the time, I had no idea what that would mean for the rest of my life. Looking back now, I think it was one of the great turning points of my childhood.

And strangely enough, I am grateful for it.

For two years, I was removed from my family and placed somewhere else entirely. Other adults. Other children. Other routines. Other ways of being. It gave me something I could not possibly have named at five.

DISTANCE.

When I eventually returned home, I had already discovered something enormously important. My family was not the whole world. I could stand outside it and see it.

And what I saw, increasingly, was that there was very little about my family that felt real or loving. In fact, I think I experienced more genuine warmth with some of the nurses and children at the sanatorium than I ever did at home. There was family in the biological sense. But I don’t think there was much family in the deeper sense at all.

Years later, at about fifteen, I told my parents I was homosexual.

That was the end of home.

I didn’t leave after a teenage argument and come back a few weeks later. There was nowhere to come back to. I had left because I had to. And when I left, it was over.

I sometimes watch films about people who grow up in brutal, loveless families and later become terribly damaged adults. Psychopaths. Serial killers. People whose childhoods seem almost designed to produce catastrophe. And occasionally I recognise something.

NOT WHAT THEY BECAME.

The beginning. The absence. The emotional coldness. And the fear. The strange knowledge, very young, that whatever happened next, you were largely on your own.

There was my sister.

For a long time, I think I allowed myself to believe that because she was still there, some part of the family remained. But even that relationship eventually forced me to look again. Sometimes the hardest thing is not losing a family. It is realising that what you thought you had may never really have been there. And yet something else was there.

Some capacity to stand outside it. To see it without having to pretend it was something else. Perhaps that began in the sanatorium. At five years old, without knowing it, I got far enough away to see. I learned that the family I had been born into was not the measure of reality.

And for that, strangely enough, I am truly grateful.

@3goodthings
@DigitalCoup
@meditation
@economics_that_works
@startrek

#Childhood #Family #LGBTQ #Survival #Perspective #LifeStory #love #security #grateful #warmth #pride

You don't get to argue with what already happened. There is no if.

You only get to choose what you're measuring it against.

I picked the version where I got off easy.

Because that's the true one. #lifestory

📚🚨 NEW BOOK ALERT 🚨📚

I’m officially working on my book, Ain’t Nothin’ But Da Truth: Norris Bennett’s Life Story.

This is the real story behind the music, the grind, the pain, the health battles, the wins, the losses, and everything it took for me to still be standing and building today.

📖 Coming Soon

#NewBookAlert #AintNothinButDaTruth #DaTruth #NorrisBennett #LifeStory #Memoir #ComingSoon #SurvivalToCEO #AuthorJourney #BookComingSoon #NBDGMusicGroup

Maybe you can't get that back as an adult. Or maybe we just stopped letting ourselves want anything that much.

My son didn't inherit my passion. He's reminding me where I left it. #lifestory

You lean on it, and you stop noticing that you've stopped bringing your full self to the task.

The machine was fine. I was the one running on empty and betting it wouldn't matter.

It mattered.

I'm keeping the tool. I'm changing the driver. #lifestory

Or maybe they're winning at a game I forgot was worth playing: the one where the relationship outlasts the round.

She'll learn to keep her card hidden. That's fine.

I hope she never fully learns to stop clapping when the other person wins. #lifestory

He's eight. He already swims better than me.

Good. That was the whole point. #lifestory

And some leave a good teacher standing in a doorway with tears in her eyes, watching a small girl wave goodbye.

That second kind — that's the one to be. #lifestory

So much has changed between my grandmother's village and this driveway.

The distance. The language my kids speak. The airplane instead of the dirt road.

But the thing being crossed didn't change at all.

The time changed. The bridge didn't. #lifestory

I have thousands of photographs. I never show anybody. They contain holidays with my family, birthdays, nights out at Uni, and completely ordinary Tuesday afternoons at the park. They contain my life.
They also contain somebody who, to anyone meeting me now, looks like a different person. That is one of the painful costs of living in stealth as a trans woman.
https://medium.com/prismnpen/living-in-stealth-as-a-trans-woman-cost-me-the-right-to-my-own-past-374e52129b8c?sk=3c6341e72467c7d2f510a2c9c4ecf291

#LGBTQ #Transgender #Photos #Childhood #LifeStory

Recently, the algorithm on two of my main social media platforms decided to show my content to a broader audience. The wave of hate that followed was astonishing, but I realized something important: it doesn't affect me emotionally in the slightest. Why? Because of the life story I am about to share with you.
https://medium.com/prismnpen/life-story-trans-woman-never-told-993fec9ff707?sk=48855f01aceb8a33da627d098bfd55db

#LGBTQ #Transgender #MentalHealth #LifeStory

this guy is a rolemodel showing that no matter how bad you've fucked up, you can reach your potential & change the world, if you start with your self. 🖤

https://youtu.be/p74_Qu-3lc8?

#SoftWhiteUnderbelly #press #lifestory

this guy is a rolemodel showing that no matter how bad you've fucked up, you can reach your potential & change the world, if you start with your self. 🖤

https://youtu.be/p74_Qu-3lc8?

#SoftWhiteUnderbelly #press #lifestory

The one real touchstone I caught before that life took over was the US version of Queer as Folk. It was my one glimpse into that world before I headed into a high-stakes, life-and-death career.

In that environment, you don’t have the luxury of the "standard" gay cultural upbringing—you’re focused on the mission and staying safe. I missed the "gay card" era because I was on the clock. I had the required skill set, and I was recruited. It’s the nature of the business.

When I came back, I tried to live like a normal person, but I was far from it. This stuff changes you. The person I used to be doesn't exist anymore. Re-integrating into the workforce was a transition with its own challenges and plenty of ups and downs.

I see why my "gay card" gets revoked often, haha. But reflecting on it now, I found love, built a life, and surmounted those challenges. I’m in a great place today. My path was different, but it led me exactly where I needed to be.

#Gay #Queer #GayBear #LifeStory #lgbt #Cybersecurity #Ottawa

This next post isn’t about gaming. It is my personal story of what it feels like to realize that you have to leave your homeland. It was a hard to write, but every share helps.

🌐 https://blog.gridranger.dev/road-96-my-journey/

#indieweb #blog #blogpost #road96 #lifestory #humanrights #leavinghome

The methods change.
The resources change.
The countries change.

The love doesn't.

That's the constant across every generation, every circumstance, every midnight worry. #lifestory

Banking to Green - Becoming an Energy Efficiency Nerd (2017) - Learn how I got from Lehman Brothers investment banking IT to solar PV and storage bothering, 10 years in... #lifeStory #optimisation - https://www.earth.org.uk/Optimising-from-Banking-to-Energy.html

Your Story Is Far from Complete; The Universe Still Has Many Beautiful Chapters to Write in Your Life. #UnwrittenChapters #LifeStory #BeautifulJourney #UniversePlans #HopefulFuture #ContinuedGrowth #EndlessPossibilities