‘I’m Deanna. I am a person who no longer has secrets, and there are no regrets.’ Credit: Facebook
Deanna Jones is a native of Charlotte, though she calls Hillsborough home these days. She’s currently serving as the president of Harmony, the North Carolina LGBTQ+ Allied Chamber of Commerce. Located in Raleigh, the organization prides itself in creating opportunities for LGBTQ+ and other allied organizations and businesses to collaborate and network.
Jones is also well known and respected as a public speaker. Just over two years ago she launched her own business, Deanna Jones Now, a consulting agency designed to help people develop compassionate understanding for transgender individuals in the workplace. Since that time she has spoken at multiple companies and conferences to help businesses achieve their goals of greater understanding and inclusion. Next year she’ll be taking over operations of the business Total Engagement Consulting, where she will continue to address LGBTQ+ issues in the workplace.
But that’s not all. Jones coaches T-ball to youth, she is a member of the National Speakers Association, she’s an avid reader and fully admits to being a high end restaurant snob. Another significant point we don’t want to overlook, Jones is Trans. And as of this past April, she’s sharing her life with her wife Imee.
David Aaron Moore: You were born in Charlotte! Tell me about your childhood in the Queen City.
Deanna Jones: Well, I was the youngest of three, first born son, and my dad really wanted a son, but he never really got to see me, because he passed on when I was four. When I was little, my sisters dressed me up as a queen, I have such a vivid memory of it. It felt just like I could breathe! I felt so relaxed. I enjoyed it.
DAM:What was it like for you as a little boy who wanted to be a girl?
DJ: Everybody, especially my parents, and other people that are in your peer groups, are always telling you to be one way. And for some reason, I had this strong desire to identify with a feminine part of myself. So it went from that, and that was the only time my sisters ever dressed me up. But from then on, I sought it out. I would pull [my sisters’] clothing out of the clothes hamper. And keep in mind, I’m seven years old. I haven’t seen any movie about this. I don’t know what transgender means. That word was not even around at that time, I just thought I had to hide that I enjoyed wearing things like my sister’s Girl Scout uniform.
DAM: What made you feel you had to hide it?
DJ: I had an immense amount of shame over it all. Because when you’re born, you’re born into one of two boxes, and if you try to get out of the box you’ve been assigned. There are severe penalties for that, whether it’s from your parents, whether it’s from your coach, you know, who says you run like a girl, or whether it’s from your peers who say, Oh, you’re a fairy, or you’re just you’re one of the girls. While I was living in Charlotte, no one ever found out. I waited to dress up in the bathroom, or when my family happened to be out of the house and it was just me. I would look in the mirror and I see a beautiful girl, but then I knew I wasn’t a beautiful girl. I knew I was a boy, and things just didn’t match up.
DAM: What were the later years of your youth like?
DJ: Here’s a classic example of thoughts I had. I wanted to wear a dress to prom. Would my date, you know, be really rather shocked if I showed up at her door in the prom dress? When I looked at women, I thought two things. One, she’s very pretty. I’ve always been attracted to women. And the second was, I wonder what I would look like if I got to wear that outfit?
DAM: I know you eventually married and had a family. How difficult was it for you when you came out to your wife?
DJ: It was the hardest time in my life. It was 2019 you know, with COVID going on, I chose to tell her, And I was asked to leave because I came out to my wife. I had realized at age 54 that I was probably going to die before I reached 60. I was drinking excessively. I was every bad habit you could have. I was very unhealthy. I weighed over 300 pounds. I literally hated myself, and suicide seemed to be the only option for me, because this just wouldn’t go away. It became an obsession for me, and I would go into a crawl space underneath my house to get to be who I wanted to be, where no one could see me. I could lock the door and be in the crawl space and for a moment. I could just be who I felt that I was on the inside.
DAM: But you survived, and here you are. What happened next?
DJ: I finally went to see a therapist. I wish I’d gotten that advice a lot earlier. The first therapist I went to see said, “you don’t want to be a woman, do you?” And so the joke I always say is, “so I went to see a second therapist.” The second therapist was a gender specialist, and she knew what she was doing, She told me that I was transgender, and this is never going to go away.
DAM: How did things go with your family?
DJ: After I was asked to leave the house, I was alone. Because of COVID we weren’t socializing, and it was just an awful time for me. I still had the pictures of my kids on the wall and I would just look at them and bawl. I can remember being with my daughter out to eat somewhere, and I was looking around at all the dads that were eating with their kids, and I remember saying to her, “why couldn’t I have just been that way?’ Taya, my oldest daughter, looked at me and said, “yeah, why couldn’t you have?” And I didn’t really have an answer for that. It was a very hard time, because I did love my wife. We were married 27 years when I was asked to leave.
DAM: Are you still in touch with her?
DJ: She is very, very angry at me. She was raised Southern Baptist, and I’m not going to sit here and blame everything on Southern Baptists, but she’s a sociology professor at Elon. This is the ironic thing, because she taught gender studies. But when it came to me, it was, get out of the house. I’m not going to be married to you, and … the kids developed her feelings towards me. I feel like they adopted her anger. Because, to me, I took away her old age, and I do still feel guilty about that. I did take away what she and I had planned together. We were going to grow old together. We were going to have grandchildren together, and I took all of that away from her. You know, a lot of people say to me, did you ever think about staying with her? But that was not an option and I had to accept that she was not she was not a lesbian, she was not attracted to women. So there was no way that the relationship would have worked. But had she been attracted to women, I would have stayed with her.
DAM: Who are you now?
DJ: Who am I now? I’m Deanna. I am a person who no longer has secrets, and there are no regrets. A lot of people ask me. And I mean very well-intentioned people will say, “Oh, how do you handle your regrets?” And I say, “I don’t have regrets. It’s a privilege for me to get to wake up as Deanna and know who I am, and have everything match. And that is key to continuing to live in this world: presenting myself and being who I am.
DAM: How did your siblings, and your mother respond to your decision to transition and be Deanna?
DJ: I have a sister who also lives in eastern North Carolina and one who lives in Boone. I lost the relationship with them. We still talk, but it’s completely different. They don’t invite me to anything. I stopped being invited to their big Thanksgiving meal. You know, one day I got really frustrated, and I just told them, “I had no idea y’all were so in love with my penis that I had to have one to be with y’all. They kept telling me, “we miss our brother!” And I’m like, okay, so you don’t want a sister, but I’m still your sibling. Now, my mother is actually my champion. She lives in an assisted living facility in Tarrboro. I don’t know, maybe because she’s not all there, but I’ll take it no matter what. When I visit her, we’ll walk around the assisted living home and she’ll say, “this is my daughter Deanna,” and that always makes me feel good. But I think she does still know, because she sometimes calls me [my birth name] and she goes, “so sorry, Deanna,” And that is wonderful. It really is.”
DAM: Lastly, tell me, what words of advice would you offer trans youth?
DJ: Be yourself. Be true to yourself, and don’t ever let anybody make you feel bad about who you are.