The Woman Within

Required Reading.... Why laughing out at what many in the world describe as a "guy" dressed as a female isn't a laughing matter. Being the target of jocularity provides the vehicle necessary to trivialize and marginalize those who are truly transgender and simply trying to live their lives. We don't laugh at people who are born differently or who face special and unique challenges in their lives. That same underlying respect should apply to everyone. Although the intent may not be there in this latest public meme, trust that the connotation of how this is interpreted by the majority of the public will only play to enforce that meme of gender conformity....or be laughed at, mocked, trivialized and marginalized. I know many of us don't have problems out there in society as transgender individuals but there are many who do...some facing violent actions taken against them, That, in itself, indicates an underlying problem rooted in fear and ignorance

It was three years ago today that my mom lost her fight for her life.  There are days still that it seems like it has been so much longer than three years because she is not here with us any longer, and there are times when the images in my mind are so clear that it appears as if she should still be with us. It saddens me in either way to know the pain with which she suffered in the end, and to know it was not very different from the pain which she suffered for so much of her life, both physically and, more so, emotionally.  Her physical sufferings with breast cancer and then hospitalizations in the years which followed from the radical treatments of irradiation she was administered back in 1970 were omnipresent in hers and our lives.  Doctors noted often that she was a true survivor and ultimately commented, in later years, that she was among the few who had survived so long with such radical treatments.  She had difficulty in conceiving and underwent surgeries to be a