And don’t forget the impact of neurodiversity on so many of us. It’s hard enough to read social cues when it seems the world is working against you but add in some level of ADHD or Autism and you have an even better recipe for not figuring it out.

I’m sure I’d have come out pre-puberty if I hadn’t been born in the late 60’s. Then I realized I was a woman when I was 30 but didn’t know that I could or should do something about it and after burying it for another 20 years figured out what I was and how to proceed during the pandemic. Still working on it. It’s going to take a long time to come out of decades of anxiety and bouts of depression. The damage caused by this late realization is going to take the rest of my life to make peace with. Thanks for the article, I enjoyed it.