The Woman Within

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 truly feel detached from the

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 transgender role models tod

A couple of random incidents yesterday combined to really light up my day and reaffirm my faith in hope for the human race.  I will admit that it is often simply the very few individuals who conspire to make life an obstacle course of hurdles and whose actions shadow the majority of the good and the love which truly permeates the world at its core. I was in BJ's yesterday stocking my shopping cart with the necessities of life and, for the life of me, could not find the one last item I was looking for.... a case of Annie's Macaroni and Cheese.  I spied a woman busily stocking a shelf and assumed she was a store employee.  I approached and asked her if she knew where the Mac and Cheese was and she replied that she was simply a contract vendor and not a regular store employee.  I apologized for my assumption and we engaged in small talk for a few moments in the crowded store. I consigned myself to the fact that I would be one item short of my list when I headed to the checkout