Sitting with Complexity: Thoughts on Womanhood, Identity, and Holding Space for All Beings

A reflection on the many ways we come to know who we are—and how we make room for others, and ourselves, along the way.

As a therapist, I work with people from all walks of life—people who are exploring identity, healing from pain, or simply trying to feel more at home in themselves. I’ve had the privilege of working with trans clients, including trans women, and I hold deep respect for their journeys, their courage, and their right to live safely and fully as who they are.

At the same time, I sometimes find myself sitting with quiet thoughts and questions around what it means to be a woman—especially from the lens of someone who was raised and shaped by that identity from the very beginning. For many women, including myself, womanhood wasn’t something we chose or claimed at a certain point. It was something that was given to us—sometimes imposed on us—and shaped how the world treated us long before we understood it ourselves. It’s a lived experience that has grown over time, through joy and pressure, expectation and resistance.

That experience doesn’t cancel out or stand above someone else’s—it’s simply different. And I think it’s okay to say that. I think we can hold space for different versions of womanhood, without needing to collapse them into one.

On occasion, I’ve heard trans women describe being a woman in ways that center softness, beauty, or femininity. And while that may be part of it for some, I notice something stir in me when I hear those things—because I know how much more complicated it has been for many of us. Womanhood, for me and for many others, has been about strength, survival, contradiction, and often, invisibility. That complexity is important to name too.

I’ll be honest—there’s a part of me that has wondered whether I should even say any of this out loud. I don’t want to be misunderstood. I don’t want anyone to feel unwelcome. And I don’t think I hold any authority on gender—I can only speak from my own lived experience, and the work I’ve done sitting alongside others in theirs.

But I also believe therapy is one of the few places where nuance should be allowed to exist. Where we don’t have to flatten ourselves to fit into one narrative. Where it’s safe to say, “I’m holding more than one truth.”

Being trans doesn’t have one neat origin. It’s not just in the brain. Or the body. Or the spirit. It’s a whole-person experience—just like being cis. It lives in memory, feeling, intuition, identity, and interaction. And for many trans people, their identity is not a “problem to solve,” but a truth to be lived.

From a therapeutic lens, my role isn’t to judge or define someone’s identity—it’s to meet them where they are. To listen. To walk alongside. And to hold the complexities of being human with care.

And really, the work of exploring who we are—of asking what makes us us, and why we’re here in the first place—is one of the oldest, most human questions we have. It’s something we all move through in different ways, with different stories, bodies, and histories. There is no single right answer—only the courage to ask, and the safety to do it honestly.

So if you’re someone exploring gender, or navigating what it means to live in your body and identity in a world that doesn’t always understand you—please know you are welcome here. And if you’re someone who holds quiet questions or complex feelings around these topics—you’re welcome too.

There’s space here for the full picture. We don’t have to get it perfect. We just have to stay open.