The Power of Being Who You Really Are — One Man’s Story About Letting Go of Conditioning

Photo Credit Amazon: https://a.co/d/2XQbIwK

Everyone my age knows who Elliot Page is, even though we used to know him as Ellen Page. Elliot’s life story holds a powerful message for everyone — we can be who we are and not who we’ve been told we are.

Elliot has been seen in movies like X-Men, Hard Candy, and Juno. His most recent project is playing Vanya/Viktor Hargreeves in the Netflix series The Umbrella Academy based on the comic series written by My Chemical Romance lead singer, Gerard Way. In The Umbrella Academy, Elliot’s character transitions to a man named Viktor.

What Elliot’s fans didn’t know was how much he was suffering from not being able to be his true self in real life. Elliot grew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His mother was a teacher and daughter of a minster. Elliot knew he was a boy from the age of 4. His mother, who hadn’t yet discovered the facts and mysteries of gender science, conditioned him to be believe he had to be a girl.

Elliot made up elaborate fantasies about having adventures as a boy and even wrote love letters to imaginary girls. At least his mother allowed him to cut his hair and wear boy’s clothing, even though she didn’t like it.

At age 20 Elliot got his first big break starring in the coming-of-age comedy-drama film, Juno. He loved filming the movie, partly because the main character had a tom-boy style and wasn’t girly.

However, when it came time to promote the film, his manager wanted him to wear dresses and heels which made Elliot very uncomfortable. He wanted to wear more gender fluid outfits to promote the movie.

This led to Elliot suffering from anxiety, depression, and panic attacks. Because he was young, he didn’t know how to stand up for himself and say, “Dressing like this makes me feel dysphoria.” Dressing in a man’s polo shirt and jeans made him feel confident.

 In 2014 Elliot came out as a gay woman, which made him feel better for a while, as he continued to be an LGBTQ+ advocate. He married his girlfriend who was a dancer-choreographer. They divorced shorty after Elliot transitioned in 2020 at the age of 33.  

When Elliot came out to the world as a transgender man, he said in an interview with Oprah, in tears, how good it felt to be able to wear a T-shirt and have a flat chest. In 2021, he became the first transgender man to be on the cover of Time magazine.

Photo Credit: TIME

Elliot says that for the first time in his life he feels true bliss and is comfortable in his own body. He feels confident to be on his own and doesn’t need a romantic partner to make him feel happy.

Now, his mother is his biggest cheerleader. Once she researched the transgender phenomenon, she understood what her son had been experiencing and quickly came around to support him.

Scientists performed an MRI study comparing the brains of transgender men and women to cisgender men and women. Transgender brains were discovered to be identical to their cisgender counterparts.

In other words, a trans woman’s brain looks the same as a cisgender woman’s brain. In a video on the science of being transgendered, Professor Pride aka Matt Haslam reveals that the same results were found with men.

Elliot has written a book about his life called Pageboy: A Memoir which is getting great reviews. Elliot wants to try his hand at directing and writing, as well as continuing his acting career.

Elliot urges us to extend love and to protect the rights of all people. He wants us to realize that whether we are transgender or cisgender, we all have had conditioning from societies, churches, families, television, and many other places.

The key to happiness is to let go of that conditioning and be our true selves. Just be who you are and let everybody else be who they are! This is the path to freedom. This is a message that can benefit us all!