It was close to midnight, I was beyond exhausted from a whirlwind week of bouncing from my aunt’s home to friends’ guest rooms, through long days of yoga training and lunch breaks with new friends, to dinners reconnecting with old ones, and so the challenge of getting comfortable in an airplane seat that did not recline for my overnight flight home presented itself.

Feeling smothered by my face mask, my body slung against the curved wall of my window seat, the side of my face smooshed into my favored pillow, I sighed, taxiing from the gate, as I said goodbye to Colorado, a place I once called home, again, and made sure to return to every year.

Not sure if it is my age, my exhaustion, or still Covid, flying is not what it once was, and I now get anxiety on travel days. I tried to calm my nerves through my breath, widening the bottom ribs to simply receive more air and slow its rhythm, but was shocked to feel my body temperature increasing along with my heart rate, immediately feeling more frustrated.

Shifting my hips to support an upright spine, I sat straight up and centered in my seat, hugging my feather pillow to my body. Since it has lost more than half of its filling, having traveled with me since college, it’s more of a comfort item than a head support. I have come to accept that there will likely not be any sleep on this flight, slide the window shade up to reveal the almost full moon, now at eye level, glaring at me through the dark night, and am captivated by her splendor.

Her entrancing glow holds my vision as I rest back into the cradle of the barely padded, crap seat, softly allowing my eyes to shut. I am aware of the need to remain conscious enough to retain my posture, but am also able to surrender into an altered state, accepting the invitation to journey to the Lion’s Gate Portal, which happened to be at its height of opening during that flight and is said to rain light codes down onto Earth to share wisdom from beyond and help evolve humanity into a new dimension.

Sounds weird, out there, and like complete nonsense, I know, but what if it wasn’t? We all know intention is everything and what we believe plays a big role in how we feel, as well as how we behave, so what would happen if we were to let go of the confinement of the ego and all the information it has stored from past experiences and opened ourselves up to something beyond what our senses catalog?

I set my intention to meditate on the Portal, eagerly asking to receive what is meant for me to know in order to grow. This is not an uncommon intention—I work with it most days—but what I got this time was miraculous.

I saw things.

I am typically a feeler, not a seer. I get sensation in my body, not imagery in my head.

But I clearly saw my child self, not as a 3D person, but as a pixelated being of gold pellets of light, vibrating in the form of eight-year-old me. Although hard to identify, it was clear it was me and yet it begged the question, “Who is that little boy?”

Seeing my younger self in such a brilliant glow of shiny orbs brought me to understand that my brilliance is both undefined and unique.

Old memories of social outings rushed in. I was not much of a typical girl. I didn’t like to play with dolls, or any figurines. They were all unappealing—my improvisational abilities were halted by painful experiences and anything unknown. Even imaginary play was terrifying, especially when dictated by gender roles, which remained with me while playing with my child when she was young.

As a kid, I just wanted to run wild and free, to feel unafraid.

That is what I witnessed the boys do. The girls were always so put-together and interested in modeling the social norms that I found revolting. A generalization, for sure, but it was the ‘70s and ‘80s.

After the flood of childhood memories stopped, I was once again fixated on this golden-light being, our eyes locked in an intense gaze, yet we wore slight smiles as proof of the overwhelming sense of peace within us both.

I am old, scorned, and jaded. Threads of awareness and feelings pieced me back together after every shattering heartbreak, every tattered and resewn scar known well. They tell tales of how I learned to tend to my needs and set boundaries, to accept every aspect of myself, each dark thought, and yet relish in the ability to give love freely and compassion, generously, remains.

My child-self and I had been at odds for a while, until now. Now, I see her in me, him too.

I have grown this last year with my daughter having friends with odd pronouns that confused me in ways I was unsure of. . .until now.

This younger generation is shifting society.

We now have so many words and ways with which to identify and categorize the self. Which was at first, off-putting to me because labels had felt confining, placing people into little boxes, but these new modes of identification aren’t limiting. They help to expand thinking, by breaking down barriers that will create a new paradigm for society.

I have struggled to fit myself into one of these new boxes and in this unequivocal encounter with my younger, masculine, glittery self, I was gifted the knowledge of knowing without having to declare anything.

However, gender-fluid terms and new pronouns are a beautiful tool with which to allow people to accept their true nature and provide the world with a way to honor it for them.

But for me, seen by the youth of today as old, I am old-school, I actually don’t need the right label, and I don’t care if it’s applied to me, or whether I’m mistaken for a man, or am called Ma’am (Okay, that one hurts a little.) because I am comfortable with who I am, being just me, even while using new pronouns. I have chosen to use she/they, as it is what I am comfortable with for me. I am comfortable with it all for anyone and am eager for the rest of the world to be as well.

What I am not comfortable with is the old, stale narrative, the restrictive label of girl (or boy). I am uncomfortable with immature—and misogynist—men (or women) who can’t help but to stare at my large chest, or objectify my curvy body with crass statements that I am expected to accept as compliments.

As much as I love being a woman, I hate that part of it, and have struggled to embody what it means to be characterized as such because I had been hearing such offensive and limiting comments since I was quite young.

After my inner-body experience at the Lion’s Gate, I felt more at peace than ever, that my inner child and I had made up, and that we could now skip through adulthood, holding hands and singing our favorite songs.

What I hope to see shift for humanity is for there to no longer be a need to use these specific terms with which to classify each other. Where nothing needs to be declared because everyone, regardless of race, belief, gender presentation, and sexual preference, would inherently be accepted and respected. That everyone, all the time, fits in and belongs, as one species, just simply being human.