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...

Each of us has to come to the point upon which we stand in our lives in a unique way... following a unique path which is ours alone. Decisions we have made, paths we have chosen, decisions made for us by others, situations not of our control which have guided us.... guided or confined us... to walk the paths which have brought us to this exact place where no other stands. As humans we are similar in many ways, and many share similar paths, but no two are the same. In the parting mists, a self-awareness of my own place in the universe has come to unfold. It is as if, with clarity, I can see the cruise control I have been on for much of my life in chasing an ideal which was solely my own, but one contrived and built by others... parents, societal, and peer expectations. As a young child, I so wanted to fit in, that I created a goal at a young age... plans... to achieve specific positions and tangibles in life to that end. In so doing, I created a sense of uniformity and normalcy t...

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...

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...

Be it far from me to ever wish to stratify, segregate, elevate or separate myself within the transgender realm, yet interestingly, I have begun to notice and piece together just this sort of rift which has begun to developed.  In the transgender continuum, there is a huge difference between "doing" and "being".  There are many I know who find that simply emulating a woman in form and fashion is but enough to suffice their being.  They are those who "do".  Dressing and emulating the feminine form are the key and primary factors.  Photos and pictures arise in high numbers which validate presence and to entice with a show of form. Then there are those of us who are out as transgender women, as women.... who dress because that is who they are and feel they are... deep inside.   The dressing is simply a state which provides for the congruency which exists deep within and allows for integration and association within the female group which one feels most comfo...

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...