Coming out Zoey
Transgender woman finds acceptance in community after decades of searching
REGINA Dec. 27, 2017, was the day Zoey Kim-zeggelaar decided to “end it all.”
“By ending it all, I mean the day I said enough is enough,” she explains.
She’d just come through an extremely busy fall schedule as a Crown prosecutor, one replete with trauma and tragedy.
She’d been sick — really sick — for a long time.
And, perhaps most crucially, she’d been living as someone she wasn’t — or, rather, she wasn’t living as the someone she was.
In late 2017, she was David Zeggelaar. Within a few months — approximately 3½ decades after she first began to realize something inside her was different — Zoey Kim-zeggelaar came out.
And rather than an ending, she found a new beginning.
These days, at age 41, Kim-zeggelaar can look back over her life in a more philosophical way.
But it was a long time coming to that point.
“I first knew that something was different when I was very young — five, six,” she says.
“And I remember I was about seven years old, I asked my girlfriend at the time if I could try on her clothes — which got me a stern talking-to from her mom. I guess it started there and that was sort of where it was for many years ...
“I know that every single person takes a different and unique path, and every person’s experience is different. I’ve heard the stories that some (transgender) people know, without a doubt, at four years old. For me, it was a lot of confusion for many, many years.”
Kim-zeggelaar grew up in what she describes as a “very strict religious” household in Nova Scotia, making it more difficult for her to sort through her feelings of “wanting to be a girl.” During her pre-puberty years, she would wait until her mom went out and then would dress up in girls’ clothing.
“Always (there was) an undercurrent of fear, anxiety, stress,” she says. “You’re afraid of being found out. You’re anxious because you can’t find a solution. You’re fearful that if you are found out, everyone’s going to hate you. You’re going to be in trouble.”
Going away to college held some promise, but when Kim-zeggelaar explained that part of herself to a woman she’d started dating, it went badly.
“She didn’t take it very well, and that was the worst possible reaction,” she says.
A second attempt to come out while at a former job met with equally disastrous results.
Then in her early 20s, Kim-zeggelaar chose Halloween as the time she would try to start living as a woman.
“That experience crashed and burned very, very, very poorly because I just started doing it: coming to work dressed up and dealing with people as a woman,” she says. “And that didn’t work.”
Kim-zeggelaar was constantly on the hunt for ways to fill the void in her life, constantly on the move, constantly looking for something to occupy her.
During her life, she’s had four careers, lived in various locations (including another country) and has taken up several hobbies.
“No matter where I went and how far I went and what I did, these issues never resolved themselves,” she says. “They always bubbled up again and were always there.”
Familiar fears were ever-present when Kim-zeggelaar eventually decided to go to law school.
“I was older, I was more experienced, but I was so afraid ...,” she says.
“Law careers are often built on relationships with other people, and I was concerned how could I build those relationships as a transgender woman. So afraid — afraid of no job opportunities, afraid of meeting people, afraid of if I’m working with clients. So I didn’t deal with it then.”
Then came the fall and winter of 2017. After years of bottling up personal fears and anxieties, and attempting to tackle all the other stresses in her life, Kim-zeggelaar had reached the breaking point.
Between the end of December until the end of January, she spent hour upon hour after work and on weekends doing almost nothing but playing video games.
She sought help from a therapist, provided through her employer.
Kim-zeggelaar spent several sessions talking through her problems. Then she decided to take another chance at talking to her colleagues.
She talked to fellow prosecutors, defence lawyers, police, court staff, judges, corrections workers, support staff in her office. She talked about her gender identity crisis, about the mental health issues it had created, and about the fact she’d spent “most of last fall going home from court, lying in bed, wishing I was dead.”
Between the end of March and middle of May, Kim-zeggelaar reached out to an estimated 150 people.
“I tried to have individual conversations with everybody,” she says. “And that was such a remarkable process for a couple of reasons. Each conversation that I had was an affirmation to me of, ‘Oh, God, I’m doing the right thing.’ Each conversation was a little bit more freeing.
“Each conversation lifted the weight a little bit more, especially the fear. I’m not afraid of anyone finding out because they’re starting to find out. And the reactions were remarkable.
“Normally, you would say that by your 40s, working in the criminal justice system, you would have a bit of, perhaps, cynicism in the goodness of humanity. But the reactions that I got from people really, really just reaffirmed, renewed my love and faith in the people I’m with.”
Kim-zeggelaar says while not everyone has completely accepted her as she is, the overwhelming majority have.
As for those who haven’t, she bears no ill will.
“My world is not one where people have to accept everything they disagree with,” she says. “It’s one where in spite of the things we disagree with, we still love and respect each other and treat (each other) properly.”
Kim-zeggelaar received the support of family members, friends and colleagues. Her wife — whom she’s been with for 18 years — not only stayed, but she’s adding to Kim-zeggelaar’s new wardrobe.
“If she had said, ‘I can’t live this way. I can’t stay with you,’ I would have understood,” Kim-zeggelaar says. “I mean, she didn’t sign up to be married to a woman. She’s a remarkable person.”
When asked the difference between David and Zoey, she says the core of her dealings with people is as it ever was, but that she now approaches work and personal relationships with far more confidence.
Her health has also vastly improved, and the repeat of a heavy fall workload this year created significantly less mental strain.
The reason, she believes, is her decision to finally reveal herself to those around her, and the positive responses she has received.
“It’s like the thing that I was afraid of wasn’t anything to fear,” she says. “And what’s really important is I know that not everybody gets the positive experience that I had. I am very, very, very fortunate.”
Each conversation was a little bit more freeing. ... I’m not afraid of anyone finding out because they’re starting to find out. And the reactions were remarkable.