Integrate Integrity

After doing an updated intro post on Instagram several weeks ago, I asked myself why bother with a reintroduction? Why not just switch up my content to reflect who I am now? but I thought about it and decided that integrity demanded one.

If we view "integrity" as "the state of being whole and undivided" (one of its definitions, according to the New Oxford American Dictionary), then I want to give the people who knew me/followed me before a clear opportunity to part ways if they don't share my new path. I'm not here to force anything on anyone.

And also, I want to have integrity within myself. I treat the identities of others with respect, looking up name pronunciations and doing my best to remember pronouns and celebrating each phase of others' personal evolutions--and I should do the same for myself. If I'm walking through my house, comfortable and confident, and I say aloud "it's a they day!" I should (and did, when it happened) stop and interrogate that concept. If astrology has proven to be a very helpful tool for me (which is has), I should be honest about that and not pretend I've come to certain conclusions or ideas in a vacuum.

I haven't been sharing a lot of the thoughts I've been processing through because I wanted to, as Jenn Giles Kemper of Sacred Ordinary Days once said, write from my scars rather than my wounds. It has been difficult at times to not process aloud (I am, after all, an extrovert), but that did give me a safe space to change my mind and form my beliefs without anyone interfering (with all good intent) in ways that would have been detrimental to the process. Now that I've stabilized, I'm ready to talk.

Not that I'm certain. To me, certainty is the death of curiosity, and I always want to be curious. I'm sure that in the future I will tweak or maybe even abandon ideas that I hold now, and acquire new ones--but I've made it to a way station and had a chance to look back over the most recent portion of my journey (and all the miles before) and see what's worth carrying forward, and what new supplies I may need for the path ahead.

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