The Woman Within

As the days grow shorter and darker and yet another holiday season unfolds upon me, I find it difficult at times to keep my own mind's thoughts, recollections and memories from many a dark place. A lifetime's worth of memories, both good and bad, happy and sad, seem to rush to the foreground in my mind's eye and take center stage at this time of year.  I know, as well, that this is true for many of us. I'd like to focus, instead, in the light of the positive on the many things I have to be thankful for.  I am thankful for those who actively share in my life.  You.... are the friends who reach out to me to console and to listen when I need it.  You.... are the people in my life who recognize when things aren't going right when I've uttered no words.  You.... are the ones who know how to cheer me up and get me out of a funk when I need it most yet speak it least. You....are the ones who recognize my life of seemingly endless hobbies and endeavors as diversio...

The closest analog I can find to my life is like that of a person who finds themselves orbiting precariously around a black hole.....just beyond the event horizon. The event horizon is that imaginary line where, once crossed, there is no escape. The odd thing about the event horizon is that from the perspective of one who crosses it, they never realize they did even though everyone outside will see they have crossed an invisible point of no return. I've realized that I have crossed that event horizon only by those around me who have witnessed my passage through it. Now, as I am drawn inexorably toward the point of singularity at the center of the black hole, so do I find myself drawn by tidal forces beyond my control towards a singularity of self. There is no escape from destiny.   Too much of Pandora's box has been opened and I have come to see the woman inside that box as simply a reflection of what was my hidden self. Too much has transpired now that has c...

Life is funny sometimes.  You know the saying I'm sure.... "Life happens while we make other plans"?  Well, it seems like even the best laid sorts of plans have a way of developing a life and direction of their own. Have you ever tried to put a plan together only to find that somewhere along the way your plan grew legs and  decided it might be more fun to take YOU on ride?  The great poet Robert Frost will probably come back to life just to torture me for rearranging his famous words, once penned, when I say.... "I took the road less travelled by..... NOW WHERE THE HELL AM I?" Well, I do know where I am.  I just wasn't so sure I was going to get here so fast. I'm referring to life now and the fact that whether or not this is to my schedule I am now full time as a woman.  I never declared it or held up a banner.  As Dr. Seuss'es Grinch would say, "It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. ...

I know I post a lot on here regarding being transgender and transitioning and all of that, but I haven't told you much of anything about "me", the person.  I know this won't interest everyone, and I will attest firmly that I am NOT writing this to impress anyone or to show some sort of prowess.  Far from it.  I simply want to add some dimension to this "two dimensional characterization" that it is easy to be swallowed up within in a blog whose motivation has been in discussion of all things transgender for me. My life is much more.  Being transgender....no.... being a woman who had to play the act of a guy for 45 years is simply one small facet of my life.  My life is much more.  It is a culmination thus far of an array of adventures and accomplishments that mesh together in some unique and personal way to paint an entire collage, an entire painting of who I am.  We each have our own unique collages of our lives and I love to learn about the amazing...

The progression of my life as a woman has taken a path of its own now.  Trying to play the act of a male has become a fast-fading memory.  It is with ease that the aura of who I am effuses like a flower blossoming in the new day's sun.  Apparent, it has become, that my life as a male was a stress filled torrent of play-acting an uncomfortable and discomforting role as someone I was not but for the benefit of others and to maintain the perception of the male effigy. To be sure, he is still here, but he was never a "he" but for the manifestation created for others.  She, is me, and she is all that others see.  It is not just in the visual but in what emanates and resonates from my soul.....and it is clearly heard by others and decried by their own volition that I am woman. I've made another huge step and decided to divest myself of my hairpiece and to have my natural hair, which I have been growing out for some time, softened, shaped and styled.  I'm uncert...

I hear it asked a lot.... mostly by people who are not dealing with Gender Identity Dysphoria. I should clarify it a little, since I do hear or see the reference in passing on multiple occasions.... It's the verb " want " as in " why someone would want to be a female ". I see the vernacular a lot and I really do believe that from the vantage of one who is not dealing with GID, understanding the difference between "want" and "am" are really almost impossible to extrapolate out or differentiate. The "am" part is not visible to anyone else but the person dealing with the GID....so it looks to everyone else like "want". When I speak of "am" - I speak to the fact that I am a woman. I happened to inhabit a body that is male. Without meeting me or having known me, it is another impossibility to see that either. It would make perfect sense if you did. you would have seen prior, a person who looked effeminat...

I saw my therapist yesterday.  It seems I see her between every six months and a year.  I unloaded a LOT on her. Like a soap opera where you miss a half season and then tune in only to be inundated with a whole new set of issues, so this session was yesterday.  There have been some huge changes: a lot of personal growth, some major paradigm shifts in my own sense of being as a woman and some discussions about what lays ahead. The occasional thoughts of even considering the notion of going "back" to being who I was is so completely ludicrous in perspective from where I am now.  Realizing I was a person playing an actor in my own "play of life" and being completely miserable at both intense and subtle levels throughout the past 45 or so years has been a revelation only visible from where I stand as a woman now. As if a puzzle assembled incorrectly, so the pieces are falling into place to see the entire picture of the puzzle of my life manifest before me now.  At t...

We all have those mornings where we wake up, after a long stretch of horrible sleep nights, to a day of clarity and calmness, feeling refreshed and anew.  Those moments, as we all know, do not last very long and become consumed by the minutiae and general stresses of reality and life.  When they do happen however, they can be an opportunity to see what has been plainly hidden in sight all along, yet unseen.  Today was just one of a handful of those days. I've been very stressed lately.  I haven't been fully forthcoming of the level of that stress to anyone and, instead, have been denying it's existence to myself.  Apparently, the adage I oft quip and only half believe, "IGNORE THE PROBLEM, IT WILL GO AWAY" was my downfall that would catch up from behind my back and consume me. It was this past Saturday Evening that J and I were out to a local T-Bones Steak House.  The restaurant was packed to the gills and the wait for a table was told to us to be a ha...

I was up early this past Sunday morning.  I haven't been sleeping all that well through most nights, my mind racing with so many thoughts, emotions and fears.  The sun was shining brightly on this early September Morning, and with the passage during the night of a strong cold front, fall was now unofficially here.  I ambled over to the kitchen and soon found myself standing over the sink as I washed and scoured the dishes, pots and pans that lay there from the night's dinner before. As I stood in silence, with the only other sound being that of the water running from the faucet, a vision of my mom in that moment arose.  There were many times that, as a child, I would awaken early on a weekend to find her in the kitchen doing the same thing as I was doing now.  I would ask her, "Why are you up so early doing dishes?". Her response to me was always the same.  "This is my time to myself." I understood, in the moment I was in now, just what she meant when...

I don't really know how to start some of my posts sometimes, so perhaps I should just cut to the subject straight away and go from there....... So with that...."I've come to talk with you again" I've been in something of a "dark place" of late, at least until recently.  There have been more than a handful of days that I wonder about why it is I bother to get up in the morning.  I shrug those thoughts off as I fight to dispel them over a cup of coffee and an array of busy-work to keep myself occupied.  It's hard to explain and a lot of it, I am quite sure, has much to do with the nature of who I am and the emotive states I entertain as part of the embodiment of who I am "Because a vision softly creeping Left its seeds while I was sleeping And the vision that was planted in my brain Still remains" I know that I am quite fortunate for many things and that in comparative terms, there are many who would simply scoff at what wou...

An affirming day yesterday.  I "thought" I was in my guy mode with my natural hair and no makeup and just a  collared shirt and Jeans.  I was up in the White Mountains of NH playing "tourist" at the Flume Gorge.  Along the walking trip, there was a point where one could diverge through a small jumble of rocks that made for a tight, dark, one way passage through to the other side.  A mother and young daughter saw me turn around and signal to J to try it, but alas, this was not her cup of tea.  On my way through, I used a pocket LED flashlight to light my way and then turned around to help the little girl, just ahead of her mother, to find her way through the cavernous rock jumble.  The mother thanked me and reassured her daughter by telling her to "follow the nice lady with the flashlight". The Flume Gorge and Walkway Later, while taking close-up pictures of butterflies that were alighting on a wooden safety railing to catch some rest and some ...

Sometimes we never fully appreciate the dysfunctionality of our families until we are much older.  By then, many years and decades of our lives have passed and we come to look back at our childhood with eyes anew, as if we were looking upon our lives as a different person than we were.  My very wise 17 year old nephew once said to me that we each live multiple lives over the course of our lifetime.  As we grow to learn about ourselves, we grow internally, both spiritually and intellectually.  Our desires, goals and perspectives evolve as we become ever more aware and self conscious of the lives we have lived, the lives around us we have touched or that have touched us in some way, and as we evolve within ourselves. In looking back on my own childhood, I can sense it all anew from the perspective of having lived through it and grown into a person who has become self-aware of her own identity and the world around her.  I can eerily look back upon my youth and trul...

Many times, people see us as they first came to know us.  An example of this happened today when I stopped in at my skincare aesthetician.  They first came to know me as male years ago when I first started going there for treatments.  I was known by my male name and the pronouns were always "he, Him, and His".  About a year ago I showed up in full on girl mode after announcing just prior that I was transgender.  There was no problem in pronoun switches to the feminine when I did show up in this manner and "She" and "Her" along with my name being used as Christen were the rule. Today, I showed up in what I like to call my "twilight zone" mode.  It's a gender neutral sort of mode in which I wear no makeup and usually don just a women's polo shirt in either blues, or blacks and a pair of casual, relatively neutral women's jeans.  Interestingly, when I arrived for my appointment the pronouns were "He" and "His" and m...

 I was looking back and reviewing the recent Laverne Cox cover on the upcoming issue of Time Magazine and in awe of this as a yet another marker of how far we have come in transgender issues within even the past year.  We are finding, as transgender individuals, increased visibility within the greater world from all that we are doing.... each and every one of us who proudly herald and proclaim our own sense of self.  The people we touch, whether it be one or one hundred thousand, makes little difference.... because together we ARE bringing light to where there was once only myth, fable and darkness.  I see Laverne Cox as one of a select few individuals who are as I would call as "keystones" in a gateway to understanding.  She, like many of the popular transgender role models today, fit easily into the "gender binary box".  This is to say that they fit with physical characteristics into either a very male or very female box.  Many of our transgen...