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...

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...

How can so many smiling pictures I post not even come close to portraying what hurt and sadness and betrayal I feel inside?  It truly amazes me how well I have learned over the years and decades to bury these feelings so well.  Yet still, I am unable to forever hide this pain and these thoughts from my self.  This post is one which will be different from the many you may have read.  I truly do not like to vent my sadness or my hurt and would rather choose to post only the bright and positive and of the good of things to come.  But the weight that has been hiding and lurking within is becoming more and more omnipresent in my conscious thoughts by day and my agitated lucid dreams by night. My mom passed away a horrible death from dementia in January... something I blogged about in this link here . It was the end to many of the dark secrets and  more dark secrets I had written about and hoped were put firmly behind me.  Yet the box of Pandora is rarel...

In 2007 we decided to move to New Hampshire and to find a house in the country. I had had enough of the social stresses and of having to play the male role I had to force upon myself daily in life and at work. It had been my self imposed responsibility and duty to play someone I was not. The woman inside me praised my ability to play this role by doling out anxieties and frail nerves to the point I could not exist to play the part any longer. We had visited Alaska twice in the years prior and I had fallen in love with the grandeur and splendor of the wilderness and of the solitude that was offered in abundance there. I had considered to move there and was speculating real estate outside of Fairbanks. But in reality, I knew this would not be realistic with both our families and for our jobs. We then turned our eyes back to New England and searched in New Hampshire, looking in the far northern reaches of the state. Joanne and I found a beautiful Log Home in Colebrook on 16 acres and hi...