+
More

I went skydiving twice — in two genders. Here's what it taught me.

This transgender woman is on a mission to repeat all the things she did before coming out.

I am living as a woman the second time I prepare to leap out of an airplane, 7,000 feet above Florida, the world filled with the drone of the plane like the rumble of some metal giant’s stomach.

The plane has one seat for the pilot, and my back is pressed against it. I’m facing the man I will be strapped to when we step into the space beneath the clouds. I am not as nervous this time as he checks the harness.

The door of the plane cranks open, and it’s like the rush of a storm has entered the plane. I imagine I am being pulled out of the plane as my partner tells me to crawl toward the open door. Instinctively, I begin grabbing at the controls because I want something to hold on to, until I realize that the pilot is yelling at me over the twin roar of wind and plane to let go.


Me during skydive #2. All photos here are mine.

“Let go.”

I have skydived in two genders.

The first time I’d gone on a tandem dive was years before I came out as queer in any sense. I jumped out of the same plane over the same patch of Quincy, Florida, but I was living as a male then. From what I remember, it felt like a strange nightmare. I was partly to blame, as I had gotten the idea of skydiving for the first time after a bad romantic breakup so as to briefly stop hearing, through sheer adrenaline, the station in my head that kept playing unhappy music.

But now, I can tell you that the other reason I didn’t enjoy that first jump was my sense that I had to act masculine during the whole process, lest the girl in me become too visible, lest I seem queer — the thing I feared so much. I felt I had to move and answer my dive partner’s questions in a certain masculine way, or he would suspect something. And, to be honest, I was also just scared. During that first jump, I had to practically be pushed out of the plane because I was too afraid to step out the door by myself. We rolled through the free fall rather than falling in a controlled way — it was awkward from plane to parachute.

As silly as it seems, I remember that during my first dive, I wanted to look like the girls — any of them — in the photos the dive shop published on social media.

It was superficial, in a way, caring about the photo more than the experience itself; but when you have no photos of you, but countless of someone people think is you, even something as pedestrian as a picture takes on an outsize significance.

I had no idea I would dive again, years later, as one of those girls both on and off the camera.

These dives are part of a project I’ve embarked upon to correct the contours of my life since coming out.

I try to do the big things I’ve done as a "male" as a woman, letting myself feel free to write my future by remixing my past — not erasing it under the eternal sunshine of a spotless mind, but making it right. Doing it better.

Months later, when I would snowboard at Breckenridge, Colorado, for the first time, I feel exhilarated, not just at fulfilling a dream from a largely snowless upbringing but because I’m doing so as a woman, as a person who my fellow snowboarders — all strangers — call she. My womanhood feels visible in this way, both small and vast at once.

Before I get on the plane to skydive a second time, I’m nervous again, but not for the obvious reason. This time, the fear comes from visibility.

Everything about this experience is flipped from the first time. Now, I want no sense of my past life’s masculinity present. The night before the dive, I worry for hours about whether I can "pass" if I tie my hair back, revealing the profile of my face. I seriously consider whether to wear makeup simply to mask any trace of visual masculinity.

Incredibly, there’s a tutorial on YouTube for skydiving makeup. The compass of myself is spinning madly. I watch the tutorial twice. I decide I’ll test the durability of a BB cream by Tarte at thousands of feet in the air, then feel ashamed at worrying so much about how I look. Then I feel the dread again that all this might go completely wrong — not because I’ll fall to my death, but because I’ll be reduced to my past.

I don’t want to be called "sir," to have that old ghost summoned by a word. I don’t want to be non-gendered — that neutrality that, sometimes, is a form of transphobia, a way of denying even the gender you present as because people cannot bring themselves to name you as such.

I just want to let go and be myself.

On the day of the second dive, all seems well, I think.

It is clear to me during that second dive how much visibility and trans-ness matters. I don’t tell anyone at the small skydiving school that I am transgender; I just want to go as a woman, with no other specific nonvisual label applied.

When I lean back to fall off the plane’s edge this time, I grin like it is the best day of my life.


After the dive, I return to the skydiving office with Cindy, the woman who runs the place, and another woman who is filling out the paperwork for her first dive.

“It’s all girls today,” Cindy says. “No guys signed up.”

I feel elated.

The other woman steps out for a moment, and Cindy turns to me. She smiles and tells me she read an essay I wrote about being a trans woman before the dive, after I’d added the skydiving school as a friend on Facebook.

“I say, go girl!” she exclaims, chuckling and putting a fist in the air. She says that voice must be difficult, but that because I am from the Caribbean, I can perhaps compensate for it slightly by my accent.

At first, I feel deflated. Sad. I’d thought no one there knew.

Then, as I consider it more through the day, I realize that whether or not Cindy and my dive partner knew I was trans, they treated me in such a way that I had no way of knowing what they thought.

To my dive partner, I was simply a woman, undefined as any category of that term; and to be a trans woman, after all, is to simply be a woman in its own category, just as it is a category to be a Dominican woman, a tall woman, any woman at all — and categories often intersect.

My dive partner had neither explicitly looked down on me for being a trans woman nor congratulated me for it, either; he had just called me "girl" and "girlie" in a way that seemed natural to him. I was simply female to him.

And wasn’t that, I wondered, the best possible outcome? Where, "read" as transgender or not, you are treated as the person you are in such a way that you wouldn’t know if anyone else had read the book of your history in your face, your body, or somewhere else?

I stood in front my bathroom mirror one night after the dive, staring at myself.

A faint orange-yellow lamp shined in the background, the sink was in shadow, and I looked like a figure in a chiaroscuro. For a while, I just stood there. I smiled, but I was sad. The sex I had been born with seemed, in that moment, a kind of secular curse.

But it was not a curse. I would not have been me, really, had I been born like so many cisgender women. This pleasant-pedestrian-painful reminder happens every so often, reminding me that I was always a woman, but I would have been a different woman had I been born cis.

This is as obvious as can be, but so easy to forget and so important: We are who we are, and we would not be that person if we had been otherwise. If we wish to celebrate ourselves and others, we must start by banishing the desire, if we have one, to have been born something else.

Now, I remember the rush of the fall through the air and how, this time, all I felt was bliss as the air rushed into my face like a vast waterfall in reverse.

I remember the moment when the parachute opened, and the roar of the wind stopped, replaced by a beautiful, calm stillness as we descended on the wind to where we had set off from.

Let’s celebrate the future by taking from the past — and making it better in the present.

Sponsored

Three women, three MS journeys: How multiple sclerosis looks different for everyone

Gina, Nathalie and Helga share their reactions to being diagnosed with MS and how they stay informed and positive in the face of ever-changing symptoms.

Courtesy of Sanofi

Helga, Nathalie and Gina all have MS, and their experiences show how differently the disease can manifest.

True

It’s been 155 years since neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot gave the first lecture on a mysterious progressive illness he called “multiple sclerosis.” Since then, we’ve learned a lot. We know MS causes the immune system to attack healthy tissue, including damaging the brain and spinal cord. Resulting symptoms can be debilitating and include fatigue, blurred vision, memory problems and weakness. Huge advancements in our understanding of MS and its underlying causes, as well as treatment advances, have been made in the past few decades, but MS remains a complex and unpredictable reality for the 2.8 million+ people diagnosed around the world.

Ironically, the only real constant for people living with MS is change. There’s no set pattern or standard progression of the disease, so each person’s experience is unique. Some people with MS have mild symptoms that worsen slowly but sometimes improve, while others can have severe symptoms that drastically alter their daily lives.

All people with MS share some things in common, however, such as the need to stay informed on the ever-evolving research, find various lines of support and try to remain hopeful as they continue living with the disease.

To better understand what navigating life with MS really looks like, three women shared their MS stories with us. Their journeys demonstrate how MS can look different for different people and interestingly, how the language used to talk about the disease can greatly impact how people understand their realities.

woman with horse, woman riding horseGina loves riding her horse, Benita.Courtesy of Sanofi

Gina—Hamburg, Germany (diagnosed with relapsing multiple sclerosis in 2017)

When her youngest son was 4 months old, Gina started having problems with her eye. She’d soon learn she was experiencing optic neuritis—her first symptom of MS.

“Immediately after the diagnosis, I looked up facts on MS because I didn’t know anything about it,” Gina says. “And as soon as I knew what could really happen with this disease, I actually got scared.”

As her family’s primary income provider, she worried about how MS would impact her ability to work as a writer and editor. Her family was afraid she was going to end up in a wheelchair. However, for now, Gina’s MS is managed well enough that she still works full-time and is able to be active.

“When I tell somebody that I have MS, they often don't believe me the first time because I don't fulfill any stereotypes,” she says.

Overwhelmed by negative perspectives on living with MS, Gina sought support in the online MS community, which she found to be much more positive.

“I think it’s important to use as many positive words as you can when talking about MS.” It’s important to be realistic while also conveying hope, she says. “MS is an insidious disease that can cause many bad symptoms…that can be frightening, and you can't gloss over it, either.”

To give back to the online community that helped her so much, Gina started a blog to share her story and help others trying to learn about their diagnosis.

Though she deals with fatigue and cognitive dysfunction sometimes, Gina stays active swimming, biking, riding horses and playing with her sons, who are now 11 and 6.

Cognitive dysfunction is common in MS, with over half of people affected. It can impact memory, attention, planning, and word-finding. As with many aspects of MS, some people experience mild changes, while others face more challenges.

Gina says that while there’s still a lot of education about MS needed, she feels positive about the future of MS because there’s so much research being done.

woman in wheelchair holding medal, woman rowingNathalie is an award-winning rower with multiple international titles.Courtesy of Sanofi

Nathalie — Pennes Mirabeau, France (diagnosed with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis in 2002)

Nathalie was a teenager and a competitive athlete when she noticed her first symptoms of MS, but it would take four years of “limbo” before she was diagnosed.

“Ultimately, the diagnosis was more of a relief, than a shock,” she says. “Because when you have signs and you don’t know why, it’s worse than knowing, in the end, what you have.”

However, learning more about the disease—and the realities of disease progression—scared her.

“That glimpse of the future was direct and traumatic,” she says. Her neurologist explained that the disease evolves differently for everyone, and her situation might end up being serious or very mild. So, she decided to stop comparing herself to others with MS.

She said to herself, “We’ll see what happens, and you’ll manage it bit by bit.”

By 2005, Nathalie’s MS had progressed to the point of needing a wheelchair. However, that has not dampened her competitive spirit.

Nathalie began her international rowing career in 2009 and has won multiple world titles, including two Paralympic medals—silver in London and bronze in Tokyo. Now, at 42, she still trains 11 times a week. Fatigue can be a problem, and sometimes hard workouts leave her with muscle stiffness and shaking, but she credits her ongoing sports career for helping her feel in tune with her body’s signals.

“Over the years, I’ve learned to listen to my body, letting my body guide when I need to stop and take breaks,” she says.

Nathalie explains that she used to only look backwards because of the initial shock of her diagnosis. In time, she stopped thinking about what she couldn’t do anymore and focused on her future. She now lives in the following mindset: “Even when doors close, don’t miss out on those that open.” Instead of focusing on what she can’t do, she focuses on the opportunities she still has. Right now, this includes her training for the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris, where she will compete for another rowing medal.

“I only go forward,” she says. “Well, I try, anyway…It’s easy to say, it’s not always easy to do. But that’s what I try to do.”

woman exiting water after swimming, woman with great daneHelga's Great Dane has become a helpful and beloved companion.Courtesy of Sanofi

Helga—Johannesburg, South Africa (diagnosed with relapsing multiple sclerosis in 2010)

When Helga first started having balance issues and numbness in her feet, she chalked it up to her training as a runner. But when the numbness moved to her face, she knew something was wrong. She never guessed it was MS.

“When I was diagnosed, I felt completely overwhelmed and clueless,” Helga says. “I felt that I had nowhere near enough information. I did not know anything about the disease…I had no idea that it was going to be a process of continually monitoring and adjusting your lifestyle.”

In the beginning, Helga’s symptoms developed slowly, and she didn’t appear ill to others. She was even able to run for a few years after her diagnosis, but she couldn’t do marathons anymore, and she began to fall frequently due to balance issues and right-foot dragging. Then her cognition issues became more problematic, especially in her job as a trainer in a printing company.

“My executive function, decision-making and short-term memory were affected to the point that I was eventually medically unfit for work,” she says. She stopped working in 2017.

However, she didn’t stop living life. Even though she could no longer run, she continued to swim competitively. She got a Great Dane puppy and trained him as a service dog to help her walk. She also serves as vice chair of the patient support organization Multiple Sclerosis South Africa, and she advises others who have been diagnosed to join a patient advocacy group as soon as possible to get reliable information and meet others with MS.

Helga says she is “hopeful” about the future of MS. “I must say that I am so grateful that we have all the new medications available, because my life would not be the same if it wasn't for that,” she adds.

Part of how she manages her MS is by looking at the positives.

“If I could tell the world one thing about MS, it would be that MS is an incurable disease of the nervous system, but it's also the greatest teacher of valuing your health, family, friends, and managing change in your life,” she says. “My life is diversified in a way that I never, ever thought it would, and MS has been honestly the greatest teacher.”

Each MS journey is unique – with each person impacted experiencing different struggles, successes, and feelings as they manage this unpredictable disease. But the common thread is clear – there is a critical need for information, support, and hope. We are proud to participate in World MS Day and share these incredible stories of living life while living with MS. To learn more about MS, go to https://www.sanofi.com/why-words-really-matter-when-it-comes-to-multiple-sclerosis.

MAT-GLB-2301642-v1.0-05/2023

This article was sponsored by Sanofi. Participants were compensated when applicable.

Ring doorbell video captures what it's like to be the default parent.

Kids, man. I'm not sure of the scientific way audacity is distributed, but kids have a lot of it and somehow make it cute. That audacity overload is especially interesting when you're the default parent—you know, the parent kids go to for literally everything as if there's not another fully capable adult in the house. Chances are if your children haven't sought you out while you were taking a shower so you could open up a pack of fruit snacks, then you're not the default parental unit.

One parent captured exactly what it's like to be the default parent and shared it to TikTok, where the video has over 4 million views. Toniann Marchese went on a quick grocery run and *gasp* did not inform her children. Don't you fret, they're modern kids who know how to use modern means to get much-needed answers when mom is nowhere to be found. They went outside and rang the doorbell.

Back when we were children, this would've done nothing but make the dogs bark, but for Marchese's kids, who are 3 and 6 years old, it's as good as a phone call.

Keep ReadingShow less

Little girl shocks her mom by pulling out a pocket full of worms

Kids will absolutely test all parts of your personality. Not out of malicious intent, but simply because kids are innocent and don't don't understand unspoken social rules, especially when they're very little. One of those seemingly common sense unspoken social rules is that you don't go to the nail salon with worms in your pockets.

Scratch that, you don't walk around with worms in your pocket, period. That is unless you're on a fishing boat and you're in charge of bait and you run out of room in the canister filled with worms. I mean, there are a lot of things that would have to come into play to make having worms in your pocket socially acceptable. But kids don't know that, and one little girl, Kylee Grace, gave her mom a shock after they left the nail salon one day.

In the video posted to TikTok, which has now gone mega-viral with over 11.5 million views, Kylee and her mom are walking down the sidewalk after getting their nails done. Jenae, the little girl's mom, asks her daughter if she has a worm in her pocket. Then things quickly get hilariously weird.

Keep ReadingShow less
@geaux75/TikTok

Molly was found tied to a tree by the new owners of the house.

Molly, an adorable, affectionate 10-year-old pit bull, found herself tied to a tree after her owners had abandoned her.

According to The Dodo, Molly had “always been a loyal dog, but, unfortunately, her first family couldn’t reciprocate that same love back,” and so when the house was sold, neither Molly nor the family’s cat was chosen to move with them. While the cat was allowed to free roam outside, all Molly could do was sit and wait. Alone.

Luckily, the young couple that bought the house agreed to take the animals in as part of their closing agreement, and as soon as the papers were signed, they rushed over to check in.
Keep ReadingShow less

A Golden Retriever taking a break on the floor.

If you’re having trouble meeting a romantic partner, research shows you could improve your chances by getting a dog. A 2020 YouGov study found that 50% of Americans would be more willing to date someone if they had a dog, while only 9% would be less willing to do so.

Women are more interested in meeting someone with a dog (54%) compared to 46% of men.

People are more attracted to dog lovers for a pretty simple reason. They assume that those who have dogs are better at having long-term relationships. “People might infer that a dog-walking man knows how to form lasting attachments, has the resources to care for someone else (dog ownership is expensive!), and is reliable enough to do the daily work involved with dog ownership,” Theresa E. DiDonato Ph.D. writes in Psychology Today.

Keep ReadingShow less
Family

Mom calls out 'weaponized incompetence' by flipping the script on parental expectations

Hearing a woman say these things is ridiculous, and that's the whole point.

@clarabellecwb/TikTok

Too real. Tooooo Real.

While marriages are by far much more egalitarian than they have been in decades past, many women will tell you that when it comes to emotional and domestic labor, they still take on the lion’s share of responsibility.

Many women are using TikTok to call out this imbalance, even going so far as to share how it led to them filing for divorce. As for Clare Brown, she’s opting to illuminate the issue in a more satirical way.

Brown has amassed over 400,000 followers on her TikTok account, where a major part of her schtick includes what she calls “flipping the script” on social issues. And as of late, it’s her focus on parenting expectations that has people—particularly fed up moms—nodding in agreement.

In a series titled “flipping the script on weaponized incompetence,” Brown pokes fun at fathers who remain willfully ignorant by asking their partners for help on even the most basic tasks, thus escaping the responsibility of pulling their weight.

Keep ReadingShow less

Redefining comfort: Your guide to seamless athletic leggings for women

Experience the perfect balance of comfort and style with women's seamless athletic leggings.

Editor's Note: Upworthy earns a percentage of revenue from the sale of items mentioned in this article.


In athletic wear, a good pair of leggings can make or break your workout experience. Comfort, flexibility, and style are key factors contributing to the perfect pair, and finding ones that marry these elements seamlessly can be challenging. Whether you're a yoga enthusiast, a gym-goer, or someone who values comfort in their everyday attire, these seamless leggings offer something for everyone. Dive in to discover the perfect pair that will elevate your athletic wardrobe and enhance your workout routine.

Keep ReadingShow less