Meet Deanna Jones of Hillsborough

Today we’d like to introduce you to Deanna Jones

Hi Deanna, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
My story as I tell it to my audiences:
Before I was born, I knew I wanted to something beautiful, something perhaps that walked in delicacy and Grace, Yes, I am the creature that will walk in the beautiful garden of Eden, preferably alone, because I really don’t need Adam, do I? .and then, that glorious day happens, I am brought forth into this world, yes, I will burst forth like a flower….what the heck is this? I didn’t ask for this. Can we get some things changed here? Ok, that’s what I think I was pondering…..but Something just doesn’t feel right, not right at all…and then, as if to add insult to injury,
…that’s why the doctor holds me up and says, it’s a boy! Wait what? What are you basing this on? My appearance? Yes, actually he did base it on my appearance. This is what is known as assigned gender at birth, the DR assigned the gender of male to me, it can also be called “my biological sex” The doctor did his job and announced I was a boy. as he was trained to do. But Dr. you don’t even know me yet! You don’t know my likes or my dislikes, what color I prefer, how I feel, what I like to wear..
TAG, you’re M so let’s get this letter M in as many places as possible! Birth certificate, nursey school, camp etc etc…..boy girl boy girl….Now nearly every document will have a b or a M beside my name…
You just made a thousand decisions for me that are non-negotiable, at least for my childhood. What color my room will be, what my toys will be, what sports I will play, and will I “fight” someone when called upon? Will I be allowed to cry and not be called a baby?
my Mother loved to tell me the story of when I was two how I picked up a truck and started playing with it…I went rrrrrrrummmmm. They were so happy they clapped…..that;s what we do, we are already influencing children into their assigned gender as early as we can…this is called gender stereotype programming…. Gender stereotypes are the roles that are assigned to men and women from an early age
For some reason, I felt different. I felt like everyone around me was drinking ice water and I was drinking something sour. I had felt this way since I was 4.
When I was 8 I would go into the bathroom and lock the door and put on my sisters clothes from the hamper. I looked in the mirror and I thought I was beautiful. This is what I saw., I knew I wasn’t supposed to feel this way. There was never a different thought, never a break from this drive. I can remember being in high school and wishing I could dress like the girls did, maybe then I wouldn’t be ridiculed for sitting at the girls table for lunch. I was never shown any movie, never forced to dress up, yet I knew that I didn’t feel right as a boy.
Everything in my brain screamed that I was supposed to be a girl….

This is where Gender Identity comes into play. Gender Identity is not the same as Biological sex in some cases. , Gender identity is one’s own internal sense of self and their gender, whether that is man, woman, neither or both. Unlike gender expression, gender identity is not always outwardly visible to others.
I started to feel like I was identifying as someone who is a girl and not a boy. I know it’s hard to understand, I get that, I wish I could tell you why, it was just there…

When I looked at the mirror without wearing my sister’s clothes, here is what I saw…. I was experiencing Gender Dysphoria
Gender dysphoria is a term that describes a sense of unease that a person may have because of a mismatch between their biological sex and their gender identity.
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• A strong desire to be of the other gender
• A strong desire to be treated as the other gender (Social Context)
• A strong conviction that one has the typical feelings and reactions of the other gender

I want people to understand, my gender identity exist here, between my ears, it always has and it always will. If you think about the science of this, sexual differentiation takes place in the first 2 months of pregnancy, sexual differentiation of the brain happens months later in the second half of pregnancy .,,,,,is it not possible that the two could have different outcomes? These two processes can be influenced independently which can result in being Transgender …. There is no proof that social environment after birth has an effect on gender identity or sexual orientation. Hear that Mom and Dad? , I’m still going to feel this way no matter how many trucks you buy me.
Although I had no language for this, (it was the 70’s) I now know today that I am Transgender, I couldn’t have expressed that, but I know that now…..of course, for a majority of the population, the brain and sex match, they are cisgender. Cis, meaning the same..

I never stopped feeling this way. I continued to express myself as a girl but it had to be in secret..I wanted so bad to be able to express how I was feeling but again, I can’t leave the box that I had been placed in at the time of my birth. There are sever penalties for being outside the box…
So clothes became my gateway to the person I wanted to be. When I was in high school I would constantly wonder what if I had the freedom to dress as a girl every day? I didn’t want to wear the tux to prom, I wanted to wear the dress. Well, my prom date won’t be very happy when I show up at her door. I knew it was impossible.
So it became my secret, my shame, and worst of all, my sadness. I got married, had 3 kids, always thinking this would be the event that would cure me. it was just more people to keep from learning my secret. I was relegated to dressing in a crawl space under the house musty and full of spiders. But If you went into a crawlspace to be someone else, eventually you had to crawl back out…
I was 50 years old and I was not happy, not happy at all…..It just kept nagging at me….I felt this shame, shame because I knew at this point that this would NEVER go away! Every attempt, every purging of the clothes came right back with a vengeance in about a week, I’ve lived half a century doing this……I’m 120 pounds overweight, my heart and liver will soon will be maxed out.
by any health measure I would probably be dead in my early sixties…..

And that’s when it hit me, I was probably 15 years away from everything being gone, a mere memory of a hot headed person that couldn’t solve a simple math problem about who she was… I’ve only got so much time in my life…Do I keep forcing myself to practice being man? Or even practicing a being a woman. Why am I still practicing? Hiding one from the other when I have a genuine and real identity that I am?

When a person does decide to finally pick a lane, take a path, whatever metaphor you want to use, it’s because it was the last option they felt they had available to them, when at long last, confronted with their mortality, this is one lane they will survive, it has now become the last resort. It’s not easy, but remaining the same will end up killing you,

I simply couldn’t take it anymore. I had to end the war against myself for once and for all. I went to a therapist , she says to me, you don’t want to be a woman do you? Ok, make that two therapists.
With the help of my therapist I decided to finally take a trip as that woman I saw my self as, I decided to only take and wear women’s clothes No back up polo shirts with Khaki pants. I’m about halfway through my trip, I had to go to the bathroom. We all know that going to the bathroom is fraught with terror, especially here in NC. I wasn’t going to mess up my favorite dress.
I pulled in the McDonalds parking lot terrified at the idea of going in. I went to the front doors and proceeded to walk in…..and then I returned to my car. No, I can’t do this.

Every transition begins with an act of resistance. I resisted the urge to flee and walked in …, no one cared. No one stared, or yelled, “it’s a man in a dress. Some people smiled and others went about their business. I was so relieved, I ordered a happy meal because that’s how I felt….also, It came with a princess toy which felt so right.

So I decided I had to finally, at long last, become my authentic self. I knew I was probably going to lose everything. Because some things can’t be changed no matter how much love there is.. I want them to know that I had to be the person inside me, I had no other choice.

if you want to set off a nuclear bomb in your family, tell them you are transgender., After the bomb had done it’s damage I felt so alone. I know there are a lot of families that stay together and there are even spouses that will stay with their new wives. I experienced none of that. Everything changed after that. People disappeared left and right. She moved to a new house and took the kids with her because they were struggling as well. I had no value anymore…..why would anyone see it differently? I was forced into exile. Every morning I would have to wake up in an empty bed and build the new framework of my life. No one had fallen asleep in my arms the night before, there were no kids to rush in and jump on the bed and say Pancakes Daddy!, no passing my daughters in the hallway to have those wonderful 10 min conversations with. Every morning I cried once my new reality hit me, again and again each new day. I will eat my meals alone, watch tv alone I will stare of their pictures on the wall and wonder how my life could have gone so wrong. I would always cry….My tears were born of the fact that this was to be my life now..Some things can’t be changed no matter how much love there is. I never fell out of love with anyone, I just finally needed to have love for myself. I want them to understand, I had to be the person inside of me, I had no choice.

Not a day goes by that I don’t miss my family, I can only have love for them now. I hope that one day we all return to love, I understand it will be different, it won’t be anything like before but there will be acceptance and sometimes, that is the best type of love we can hope for..

Somehow I made it through the most painful period of my life. You can’t have that much loss and not be crushed by it. I had to become my authentic self. I am Deanna. Once I transitioned to her, my new life slowly began to take shape. I became that person I always knew I was. I woke up from my self induced mental and physical haze. I have transitioned in every aspect of my life and I couldn’t be happier. There have been rough spots…..very rough as I mentioned above but I wake up and feel so lucky that I get to be Deanna.

It was a few months later that I transitioned at Cisco and other social groups.
When I transitioned here at Cisco, I had a meeting with my team, (which I did not attend.) It was to educate my team on Transgender basics. About 30 min into the call, I started getting congratulations, way to go. Of course, I’m bawling like a baby, it touched me and made me feel loved.
I came out the same day to my Toastmasters group, same outcome, nothing but love and support. It was one of the most incredible days I ever had. Everything finally felt so authentic and suddenly I wanted to be involved in my life and work.
You see I was one of those people who kept their heads down, a lot. I didn’t volunteer, I wasn’t engaged. My goal was to get through the day. , Cisco allowed me to not only keep my job, but to thrive in it. I am a different employee now. I have such wonderful support from my manager who has allowed me to grow in my role as Operations Manager. I have the support of my team. I have no doubt that I am a better and more engaged employee as Deanna

When I tell people I am transgender, they will frequently ask, are you unhappy? Do you have regrets? I want to get angry because I know this is born out of the myth that some people want to spread about how most of us have this regret and wish we could go back or detransition. Actually, most studies show only 4-6% of people who have transitioned are unhappy and attempt to detransition, of those half of them go back to being the gender they transitioned to. But if there are only two, you will see them all over the news.,

It gets blown up in the media. I look at them and I tell them I am very happy, yes it came with a lot of complications, much anguish and many tears. But I honestly wouldn’t trade it for the world.
I can’t transition to a male identity no matter how hard I tried, no matter how hard society tried . My gender identity has to align with who I am…..and as you can see, it is not a man….for me this is how I will always identify.

It is how I think and how I feel. Because I finally learned to accept this, I am finally comfortable in my own skin because I believe I am now as my creator (whoever she is) made me.

Today, I am continuing to live a whole new life. I just got married this past April to the love of my life (and yes, this time I got to wear the dress) I am currently the President of Harmony which is the lgbtq+ Chamber of Commerce for the Eastern part of the State. I started my own company where I help educate companies about their LGBTQ+ workforce and the best ways to make them feel welcomed and engaged. I am always amazed at how many people will come up to me and say, “I had no idea” or “I have a transgender person in my workplace and I have no idea what to do” In so many ways, I have turned my life around, no more secrets, no more shame and no more crawl spaces. I may not have entered the world on my own terms, but today, I am so happy I get to be my authentic self,

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
No, it has not been smooth, but this experience and how I live my life have made it all worthwhile. I lost my wife and my special relationship with the kids. I am sure my kids will come around as they get older. This will just take time. I know I also struggled with making sure everyone else had enough time to accept this. I was impatient at times.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I worked at Cisco Systems for 25 years in Sales and Operations. Cisco did a great job with my transition. They spoke with my team and explained what being transgender meant. I have recently left Cisco to pursue my passion of speaking to companies about authentic communication in the workplace. I am also President of Harmony.

Are there any important lessons you’ve learned that you can share with us?
The most important lesson I learned is that nothing can replace being your authentic self. For so long, I had to pretend to be someone else and I kept this secret from everyone. Now, there are no more secrets, just the truth that I get to live every day.

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Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.deannajonesnow.com