The Woman Within

I haven't really blogged much lately and what I have written about, I've tried to keep topical and with an air of positivity. The reality is that there is so much more going on and it is hitting me from so many different angles and so many different areas in life that it is beginning to become too much for me to handle. This is isn't anything anyone else can resolve and it's not anything that therapy is going to help. This isn't anything that is going to be easier in making a choice and no easier if I do not. I don't even know where to start with any of this. So much of this started long before and so much has just been added to the pile of minutia which in totality has become a burden left for me alone and for some and other aspects for both of us to bear. The other day, I was out to do some Christmas shopping. Driving through the mountains along the nearly empty interstate highway that evening, some thoughts came to mind. I felt very comfortable and ...

I've come to learn yet another facet of myself this past week.  It's been both affirming yet so very starkly frightening, altogether at once.  It is not something that anyone told me to expect nor is it something I would have suspected.   Even if I did suspect what I saw and what I have come to learn of myself, it would have been denied, like I did for much of my life;  denied, ignored and placed in a box like so many of the other piece of my life had been hidden. It was a crisp winter's day this week and the snow, brightly shining under a warming late January Sun beckoned for a bit of playtime.  I grabbed my cross country skis and headed out into the backyard to do some laps.  I was not dressed or made up as Christen, save for a set of small earrings I often wear at home in my male mode.  After a couple of laps around the yard, I stopped and decided, in the stunning sunlight and with a contrast of green trees and blue sky, that a picture was wa...

Two years ago, if you asked me as I took those first steps out the door, if that would be enough.... enough to just occasionally be allowed to present as the woman within.... I would have said.... "YES!" Two years have gone by.... and in that time of those two years, I have carefully kept close track of my own sense of being.  I've allowed myself to be myself for the first time in over 40 years of my life.  I've expressed as I feel natural and without the constraints I had unconsciously engrained into my own psyche over the years of self repression.  And with my allowing myself to be myself, I have come to shed the shyness I once had.  The panic attacks and anxiety which resembled some horrific cross between complete catatonia and a heart attack disappeared, as did the nervous cold sweats and involuntary twitches and spasms which had become a sullenly accepted facet of who I was. In expression of the feminine, I became aware, for the first time in my life, that...

Last night I visited with my therapist for the first time in several months. We talked and asked if she could be direct with me. I said I preferred it that way. I'm a no bullcrap kind of gal and I play life straight and to the punchline. Honesty to self, honesty to others is the best approach I find. Her questions really hit home but they were not unexpected nor were the answers. If anything, it was me sounding them out that really began to hit home. It is one thing to say these things to yourself but it is another to answer to someone else. The therapists I have had really never ever told me who I was and my current one hasn't, but she did throw back some thoughts and perspectives which really bore meaning and thought. I told her I wasn't transitioning but working in a middle ground. I wasn't on hormones and I wasn't planning to change gender marker or legal status and to play a guy role as well. From where she sat, she wasn't buying it. In those...

The Girl I Never Knew -Christen B It was years long ago Perhaps when about age five Someone who I knew I truly was First knew that she was alive Others thought she was a girl It was her curly hair they would say The comments she remembered well Visions of an earlier day Through the early years of school She had friends with whom she would play It was always with all of the girls With whom she confided in each day Her best friend was the little girl Who visited from across the street Imaginative games were our world Our worlds combined were complete And as time and life wore on Our worlds began to be torn away Aspects of the world I had been living in Were taken from me each day The girls in school left me alone The girl next door, she stopped seeing me too They were becoming more as women I was alone and felt nothing I could do The toys of my sister’s They were one by one taken away Each was replaced with another That I was told I would enjoy a...

A good friend, Sherri,  published a piece on Transphobia recently and it brought to light, a darker aspect within the greater bounds of society that I have found disturbing myself.  We are judged NOT by who we are but often by how we are interpreted by others.  We are told and have heard, many times, the saying to "Not judge a book by it's cover", yet this is exactly how we, as transgender individuals, are interpreted in many instances. I know of a number of transgender individuals who have completed their gender reassignment surgery but have had notable encounters attesting to their being questioned of their gender in public accommodations.  Societal expectations of feminine appearance often dictate whether or not one's gender presentation is questioned, irregardless of legal or plumbing status being congruent with that of their assigned gender. I've had the opportunity to view this discordance from the opposing end, where no one seems to ascertain me as an...

I know many who say or who have said that "Halloween is the 'free night out' for crossdressers and transgender individuals alike. I suppose that, in one sense, it is... but in many ways it is not as well. For those who have spent countless anxiety ridden years hiding their feminine sides from the world in fear, it is a night that can bring a sense of acceptance or, at the very least, a perceived tolerance when they step out the door into the world for that one night. I beg to differ however in the entire premise of that perception.  The realizations are subtle but poignantly made in my last stop of my story of that evening... Joanne and I went out for a night on the town on Halloween Night. Neither of us were dressed for Halloween as we were not heading for a party, but rather, were heading out for an evening of shopping and dining. At the local Kohl's, no one perceived or was cognizant of any variance from the gender I was presenting as... save for one young, 1...

So I popped into Lowes last night for more wainscotting and liquid nails (sigh... not the gel ones that look pretty). I walked into the store thinking I looked pretty much like a guy... and even J agreed. Apparently I don't.... Approaching the register, a youngish girl cashier announces that her register was closed... but then takes a look at me after saying this and lights up with a smile from ear to ear and decides hurriedly that she would reopen the register. It wasn't a snirky smile or one of silent laughter from her. It was that look of "I know your secret and it's way cool". So I dropped my "hey,how you doin?" sort of pretense and and wafted into girl talk with her for the next several minutes. She wasn't interested in that sort of "I'd like to go out on a date" way... She was interested in me as a unique feminine person that drew her in a positive way toward me. So recapping this with J in the car, it amazes me how much more ap...