Seana Smith, whom many know as Sean Smith, will launch her book at the La Jolla Recreation Center, where she slept while homeless.
Bridging difficulty with gratitude for her community, Seana Smith is returning to La Jolla with a new book on identity, inspiration and integration.
“I, Sean/a: The Story of a Homeless, Intersex Woman Who Inspired a Community,” co-authored by psychologist Kirsten Harrison, details Smith’s discovery of herself as intersex and covers her close relationship with Harrison as she battled homelessness and found her way to intersex advocacy.
The book also reveals how Smith has learned to use her “special flair and magic and personality to help youths get comfortable with themselves,” Harrison said.
Harrison and Smith will host a launch party for “I, Sean/a” at 1 pm Saturday, April 5, at the La Jolla Recreation Center, which Smith said was instrumental in her journey to finding herself.
Decades ago, Smith was known as the male Sean Smith, a La Jolla resident who played basketball at the Rec Center and taught PE.
“I was here for 30 years, and so everyone knew me as Sean the basketball player,” Smith said. “I always wore guy clothes and basketball clothes. … That’s why Sean sticks with me here in La Jolla.”
Over time, however, Smith realized she was intersex, meaning a person born with physical characteristics that don’t fit typical male or female patterns. Often, people discover they have intersex traits in puberty or adulthood.
“When you think of intersex, think of your high school anatomy class,” Smith said. “I was born with my anatomy being both male and female.”
Intersex is different from transgender, which describes people whose gender identity does not match the sex they were assigned at birth.
“Today, my brain is more responsive to my female anatomy,” Smith said, explaining she used female pronouns in the book.
“This is truly who she is,” Harrison said.
Smith doesn’t blame others for not understanding she’s intersex, she said. “A lot of times we’re so visual; we see what we believe. [But] for me, every day, my body changes. And so each day, I’m discovering more and more of who I am.”
The process of unearthing her true identity began about 20 years ago, and led to challenges in keeping a job and home, she said.
Smith left her teaching job in 2005 “when everything started to unravel,” she said, adding she’d realized “something was wrong.”
“I knew my body wasn’t aligned with who I was,” Smith said. I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t be Mr. Smith.”
Smith left her apartment behind as well, seeking help from friends, moving into a crisis center and other apartments for some time and working various jobs as she figured out her identity.
She felt compelled to stay in La Jolla, however, sleeping in her car from 2007 to 2009, until the car was impounded, then sleeping at the Rec Center for three years.
During that time, Smith struggled to come to terms with who she is and how to support herself, noting several members of the community gave her money and clothes.
“Everybody just helped me, because they knew I wasn’t the person that I thought I was,” she said.
“I cannot tell you what the community did for me. All the restaurants, everybody was there for me. I didn’t go without.”
Even more impressive, Smith said, was that she received help despite community confusion: “What they saw was a Black man, but on the inside, I was an intersex female.”
While homeless, Smith met and befriended Harrison, also a La Jolla resident.
“The psychologist in me was really intrigued,” Harrison said. Over the course of their friendship, Harrison helped Smith with financial resources and working through Smith’s mental health struggles, many of which are laid out in the book.
Harrison and Smith have been in close, daily contact for 10 years now, they said, through Smith’s healing process and eventual 2018 move to Palm Springs to write.
While in Palm Springs, Smith takes long, therapeutic walks in the desert to “release her mental anguish” without disturbing others, Harrison said.
Harrison has also seen Smith through her growth into advocacy, taking trips to New York, Sacramento and Washington, DC to deliver messages of antibullying, antidiscrimination and intersex awareness.
“We have to work together in order to understand,” Smith said. “Our bodies are so important, and we have to take care of [them]. … If people can understand how important it is to know who you are and what you’re able to handle, then we wouldn’t have so many problems.”
To launch her book at the Rec Center, which sustained her for years, feels right, Smith said.
There’s “just so much gratitude,” she said. “I’m just so thankful for the opportunity to tell my story.”
The paperback edition of “I, Sean/a” will be on Amazon Friday, March 28; hardcover copies will be available at the April 5 launch party.
Looking for more La Jolla events? Head to our Explore page for the best goings-on.
© lajolla.ca
