How I died to live an authentic life | Gina Duncan | TEDxBocaRaton

I knew I was different when I was seven years old we lived in Rockaway New Jersey and we lived across the street from this amazing Irish Catholic family called the Moriarty's and the Moriarty's had seven girls mr. Morey already kept trying to have that boy but he never could have that boy one Saturday morning I was walking out flipping my football in the air and the Moriarty's door bursts open and my sisters and the Moriarty sisters came flying out laden with boas and dresses and hats and jewelry and that grabbed me as they flew by and said come we're going to dress up so in our basement when my sister finished throwing a sheath dress on me and when she finished painting my fingernails and polishing my lips I felt for the first time that I could breathe and that's a feeling that stayed with me my entire life so let's fast forward 40 years it was a crisp November morning regional manager of Wells Fargo I was settling into my office on a Monday morning first cup of coffee I was sitting down in my quarter corner office with my three-piece suit my starched collar my hundred-dollar Bostonian shoes and the phone rang and it was my wife of 25 years and she was sobbing on the phone how could you do this to me how could you do this to us how could you be having an affair I said what are you talking about she said I found the lingerie you see she had found my stash because all the times that I traveled with Wells Fargo I had to have that fix that had enabled me to be able to breathe knowing that my gender identity was different than who I was I told her I'll be right home and quite frankly I don't remember if I stopped it any stop signs or if I stopped it any stoplights all I could think of would I say yes I've been having an affair or what I tell her the truth that I've been harboring this tormented secret for so long and I have talked to no one about the shadowy existence that I lived every day I decided to tell her the truth and when I got home she had scattered the clothing on the bed and I told her what I adored for endured for so long and had kept from her even through 25 years of marriage and I was so disappointed in the fact that my life partners someone that I loved with all my being her piercing blue eyes wind gray and she started backing out of the room and in a voice that sounded like you would talk in a funeral parlor she said I never want to see this you will keep this away from our children and you will keep this away from me I said nothing but inside I was screaming no you're my best friend helped me I've been dealing with this by myself for so long now is the time for you to help me but it wasn't to be you see she later told me it's not what she signed up for and I don't blame her for that you know because she married the class president she married mr. Merritt Island High School she married the homecoming king she married an all-state middle linebacker of an undefeated state championship football team they got a football scholarship to play football at East Carolina University and lastly she was married to the regional manager of Wells Fargo overseeing a third of the state of Florida twenty-six branch is a multi-million dollar budget we had a vacation home in North Carolina one in Ponce Inlet of home for our kids to live in as well as our primary residence we had the white picket fence existence and I was threatening that with my gender dysphoria our marriage lasted five more years and then ended in a very bitter divorce battle the constant that kept me going was Wells Fargo Wells Fargo absolutely walked the walk and talked to talk and supporting me I remember I called Human Resources that I said this is what I plan to do I've thought this through I've done a lot of research and I want to transition on the job and by golly I want to keep my job as regional manager but I want to do it as Gina Duncan I thought it would be a big deal Human Resources says well you should know that you will be the 17th person it was Fargo to transition on the job you know I thought I was something special but to Wells Fargo I was chopped liver it's like we got this so I took some time off I took a leave of absence and I went out to California to have facial feminization surgery done and oddly enough I went to the same outfit that did Caitlyn Jenner's facial feminization surgery and the doctor told me I'm gonna do 11 and a half hours of surgery on your face little things like peeling your forehead down to your eyebrows and sanding your forehead so that you don't have these ridges above your eyebrow sorting that shortening the distance from the top of your nose to your lip plates in my jaw chin tracheal shave nose job twice and I asked him how do you do eleven half hours of surgery and he says don't worry I take a nap I thought you take a nap he goes yeah I've got an assistant who works on you while I'm napping and then I finish up okay he supposedly was one of the best and you see the Marilyn Monroe typeface that I ended up with which is I'm very pleased with it but in returning to Wells Fargo it was a super positive experience and my second day we hit some bumps keep in mind that while I was gone they flew in a SWAT team and they trained all of my managers and they educated about what it meant to be transgender I had an assistant will call her dawn and Dawn had been my assistant for like seven years and on the old you know TV show with radar it's like dawn do you have that file and she would be standing there with that file we were that close and that synced the second day I was at work presenting as Gina when I came back Don disappeared at lunchtime and it wasn't like Don not to be prompt she came back to work at about three o'clock and I could tell something was wrong as Don banged into the hallway walls as she entered my office and Dawn had been drinking and Don didn't drink but she sat down in my office and she cried and she said I never got a chance to say goodbye to Greg I loved my boss and now my boss is dead and looking out from my eyes you can only imagine that I'm seeing the same person my same assistant that I've had for seven years that we've worked together the same office yet what's looking back and what she's seeing is something totally different had planned my transition in every way except for this concept that Greg had died which means that I had no past and all of the connectivity that I had with people and with things and with places and with his experiences were gone this was further reinforced a couple of weeks later I was making sure that my kids were okay with this and my grown daughter was over and we were cooking steaks out in the backyard and I went to check on the steaks and I heard this sobbing and I turned and my daughter was balled up in her chair with her head buried in her hands and she was just heaving Lea sobbing so I ran to her and I held her and I said honey what's the matter because she had been there through every surgery she was the one who picked me up if my sister wasn't there she was there too to help me through convalescing through the surgeries that I had and she was always there to support me and as I held her she said I miss my dad I had coached her through t-ball and softball and we had been very close and she kept saying I missed my dad and all I could do was rocker and hold her close and we rocked for so long and all I could say is I'm right here I'm right here after that I have to say I I sunk into a very deep depression because I went through this experience of knowing that people were distancing themselves from me and for transgender people our biggest fear is social isolation that we don't fit in anywhere and I was starting to feel that from family members from my daughter from my assistant and the sad feeling that they thought and felt in their minds that Greg had died and we're going through frankly the stages of grief and then one day something turned that around I was at I was having dinner with my sister and her daughter at our favorite Italian neighborhood restaurant and my daughter I mean my niece Jennifer looked up from her pasta and she kind of squinted her eyes at me and she said you know and Gianna I'm really jealous of you it'll never forget these words she said right now in your life you're like a blank canvas that you can paint whatever life you want for yourself moving forward and while I was mired in thinking of my death and the negativity of my transition she was opening a whole new door for what I could be and I soon found my voice and I realized that all of my experiences in corporate America had led to the moment where I could do something to support the transgender community I joined equality Florida and now I travel the country educating corporations and law enforcement and hospitals nonprofits about inclusion of transgender people and what it means to be transgender because it's one of the most quickly emerging demographics in the country I felt like I had the best job and I still do the best job in the country in making that difference in someone's heart and mind so let me leave you with this story and this kind of speaks to to that one of the weird quirks of my journey was that you could not change the gender marker on your driver's license until you had gender reassignment surgery and I wanted to go to the best possible in the country and at the time there were only four doctors who were doing gender reassignment surgery and one of them was Marci Bowers and I wanted to go to Marci oddly now she had this facility out in a mining town called Trinidad credit Trinidad Colorado but she was backed up so it took a year so during that year I was presenting as Gina Duncan and traveling with Wells Fargo but I had not had my surgery so my driver's license had this dazzling picture of Gina Duncan on it but it had big M on there as well so every time I flew for Wells Fargo and I flew a lot the TSA agents would look at my driver's license and look at my ticket and they would sneer at me and I would be outed every time I traveled so finally I saw Marci Bowers once I came home and healed the first thing I did was head down to the DMV and oddly enough there was a new DMV in Orlando and I walked in and it was hardly anyone in there and we all know that when you go to the DMV the bane of humanity is in there usually you can't hardly walk but there was hardly anyone in there and I sat down and I noticed a gentleman that looked very much like my grandfather and if you look in the dictionary of grandpa you will find a picture of my grandfather shocked of white hair white bushy eyebrows soft beautiful eyes and he always had this amazing smelling pipe in his teeth I noticed that grandpa got done with his customer and I noticed that he took a deep breath and he looked at this picture on his desk and the picture was of had to be of his two grandbabies and you know how you can kind of read somebody and I could tell but he was counting the days until he could spend full time with those grandbabies well sure enough grandpa went next so I went up there and I handed in my letter from Marci Bowers that said this person is physically female from head-to-toe I said I would like to get my gender marker changed on my driver's license so grandpa looked at the paperwork and he looked at me and he looked at the paperwork and he said I'll be right back well we all know in the DMV that the walls are all acrylic so you can see through them so I sued grandpa go to the back and Grandpa's talking to the supervisor in the same thing they look at the paperwork they look at me though with the paperwork grandpa starts coming back I'm thinking oh this may be ugly but sure enough grandpa stepped up and he said miss Duncan everything seems to be in order if you'll step back we'll take your picture a little while later the kiosk where you usually get your driver's license I notice a grandpa went over and got my driver's license and he came back and he said miss Duncan so I went up and he looked at me and he said I have to tell you you're my first and instinctively I said well I certainly hope I'm not your last and he said with these amazingly warm eyes he said I hope you're not either and I thought that he was gonna go home and he was gonna raise those grandbabies with an open heart in an open mind for all people and when I walked out into that parking lot I never felt more alive thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 44,292

Rating: 4.5892859 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Life, Gender, Compassion, Inequality, Self improvement

Id: 7EPDdl9GIhY

Length: 17min 29sec (1049 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 28 2016