This post is something of an important rite of passage for me, and I suppose the perhaps overly metaphorical title reflects that. And if you’ve seen my posts by now you may notice I enjoy using nautical themes in my titles and I’m not about to stop now.
“Rounding the Cape” or “Rounding the Horn” were old terms for a maritime rite of passage. Sailing around either the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa, or Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America were incredibly difficult endeavors. Many ships sunk in the attempt. Others still could make no headway and had to return home with their voyage incomplete.
But any sailor who made the voyage earned renown and respect. Those who completed the journey were granted the right to wear a gold hoop earring in whatever ear faced the cape on the crossing. They also earned the right to get a tattoo of a fully-rigged ship, and they were granted the right to rest their foot on the table when dining. These were privileges earned through a brutal struggle.
I’m not a sailor, and I’m not sure if I ever will be. I probably won’t ever round either cape in a literal sense. But that doesn’t mean my life is without some rites of passage, and I suppose today is as good a day as any to make one notable journey that has been long overdue.
A Long Overdue Acknowledgment
This post is largely for those people who have known me in the past, and for those who I have yet to meet but with whom I may share some solidarity. For a few months now I felt brave for simply letting a simple fact exist in the open for people to discover on their own, but increasingly what once felt like being brave for dropping the mask, now feels like being too afraid to speak the truth clearly and openly. Perhaps now I’ve just gained enough confidence in myself that it now demands more bravery of me. And I suppose there’s a part of me that feels like the people who I’ve enjoyed working with and who I’ve spent hundreds or thousands of hours of my life alongside deserve a bit more of an explanation than just leaving them to wonder and figure it out on their own.
I am a trans woman. My pronouns are she/her, and you can continue to call me Alex.
I started socially transitioning in October of 2025, and my closest friends have known since then. I’ve told family over the months following. I was actually planning how to come out to my coworkers at Nav right when I was laid off in July of this year, and I think that’s where I feel the biggest sense of regret that I didn’t get the opportunity to be fully open about who I was with the people I really enjoyed working with.
I call this an acknowledgment and not something like a “change” or even a “transition”, because from my perspective that’s a lot more of an accurate description of it. This is something I’ve known about in some form or another for well over a decade now. It took me until right around 2020 to really accept what my feelings meant. And then until the start of 2025 to decide that simply pretending it wasn’t the case wasn’t actually going to be a viable strategy to live the rest of my life. On the one hand, my only regret was not being brave enough to do this so much sooner. Although I can certainly forgive myself for the fear, it wasn’t unfounded.
I’ve laughed to myself that my timing for coming out was particularly bad. Sure, there have been worse times to be trans, but things look a little scary from this perspective at the moment. And of course, I knew that. At the end of 2024 I told myself I just needed to wait a little while longer, until the situation got better and being openly trans got easier.
But I realized that the only way that it gets easier for any of us is if some of us are willing to be ourselves when it isn’t so easy to be ourselves. Life is short, we only get a single moment. Unfortunately my moment happens to be in interesting times for people like myself. But perhaps in 20 years I can look back and feel proud that when I was scared and my fear told me to put aside my own freedom and happiness to wait for things to get better, I instead chose to be myself anyway, and maybe doing so will be a small part of making it an easier world for people like me by then. Maybe I can be the one with my foot on the table, telling the stories that inspire others waiting for their turn to round the cape too.
It’s still scary, and I can’t promise if or when it will be better. I wish it need not have happened in my time. And that’s what held me back for so long. But my favorite quote directly answers this. As J.R.R. Tolkien wrote: “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
And that’s it, I’m not sure how much more I can say. If you’ve known me before, I hope this gives you a chance to know me a little better. If you’re trans yourself, and you could use somebody to talk with, or just somebody to be there for you, I’m happy to be that friend.
And on the off chance anybody read this far and is feeling disappointed in me, I don’t have any consolation for you. I guess this is simply where you find out that our paths diverged long ago. But I’ll welcome you back with open arms if you ever learn what it feels like to live a life defined by love.