The Woman Within

The dreams are getting worse. I've had disturbingly vivid dreams for the past two months which seem to repeat, over and over night after night. They all seem to be following the same pattern and in each dream I always see myself - my feminine self. I'm usually just dressed casually - nothing special. Usually it's just nice feminine jeans and boots and a fashionalby feminine top. There is nothing sexual in the dreams - I just am myself. I'm going about what I would normally do but as a female. The pattern of the dreams changed recently and I started to find myself dreaming vivid dreams again as my male self. The dreams I have as my male self are strikingly vivid and almost always disturbing. The latest of these dreams was a series of disturbances, like waves, which when I awoke, left me disturbed for much of the day today. At first I dreamed of skunks - large furry black skunks with white stripes. They were all around me and slowly plodding their way toward m...

The holiday lights, the sights and sounds of Christmas and the thoughts of friends getting together for an evening of merriment. These were the makings for our holiday night out at the Crowne! Joanne and I arrived at the Red Roof Inn around 4:30 on this Tuesday Afternoon with enough time to prepare ourselves to go out that evening. After checking in at the front desk and receiving our key, we gathered our belongings and approached the door to our room. I inserted my keycard and turned the handle of the door only to be greeted by an out-rushing wave of heat as the door opened and I stepped in. It was immediately apparent upon examination of the thermostat, that the last person to vacate this now sultry abode, had taken it upon him or herself, to turn the heat up to its maximum position possible. The room felt as if it were approaching a temperature near enough to a level which would allow it to self combust as I quickly looked for ways to dissipate the heat. Certainly, ...

My latest foray out en femme was a wonderful experience for both my wife Joanne, and I. It was wonderful because it was affirming and supportive and it disposed of many of the pre-dispositions we held inside of us and paved the way for further exploration. For Joanne, it was primarily her fears of how I might be accepted and her worries for my safety. For me, it was more a concern towards how she felt and in our ability to blend in with a mainstream crowd. We started the night with a repeat visit to a local P.F. Changs Chinese Restaurant. The last time did not include the wives in the adventure so this was a new wildcard to add. This particular restaurant is most easily accessible from within the mall to which it is attached, and so, with this knowledge in mind, we parked underneath the Nordstrom's anchor store as a base of entry. Joanne and I along with another couple were ready to begin our entry into the mall. There were some moments of panic and distress from ...

More than a few requests have trickled in regarding my first adventure out into the mainstream world last Tuesday evening and so here's the trip log and a little bit of what I was feeling and experiencing.... Although I had been out prior to alternative clubs as my true feminine self, I had not as of that point, ventured to great degree into the more busy realm of the mainstream world. Last Tuesday evening represented my first foray into the greater world and it was met with great success and validation. The evening was to start with dinner at a mainstream Chinese Restaurant linked to a major mall. As we drove through the parking lot of the mall in multiple loops, it became more and more obvious that this restaurant would only be accessible by entering in through the Mall. This realization added a layer of subdued panic to that moment, although I composed myself to maintain authority of the impending situation. We parked in the garage under Nordstrom's and ma...

Repressed memories really do take some time to surface I am finding. I have only in the past 6 months come to realize so much about myself from childhood that I never thought I even remembered and this was before I started to research this. The past came at me with a single remembrance one evening recently that struck me and opened doors into my memory that I never knew existed. Working back through the memories, I pulled out many photo albums which contained pictures taken during my childhood. I looked at each one carefully. Facial expressions, poses for the camera - all were examined. I asked my spouse to look through these as well and to independently come up with her assessment of what she saw. It was the poses, the way I stood, the way I looked, the way I had my hands on my hips. The looks of sadness or that look of being a million miles off in space when the picture was taken. Some of the pictures from the teenage years, she said, showed a deep depression. She w...

Recently, a thought came to me.... "Happiness is the journey, not the destination" which started me to thinking about this in the context of the life I have led thus far. Earlier in my life, I felt that happiness could be obtained by carefully mapping out my life and connecting the goals-of-life dots. The end result was thereby the penultimate achievement and the journey then was at times being ignored. In the process, I suppressed my own sense of self to fit the mold that would map out this course of direction. As time passed, I checked off each of the things I managed to achieve and came closer to the materialistic and definable goals I had mapped. In the process, I ignored my own sense of self and ignored the journey it needed to fulfill. I had suppressed the journey of self in favor of reaching the destinations of the material life. It was not a negativity, just a lack of inclusion for an important facet that was being repressed. In a similar way, I am fin...

Last night, Saturday, was my first event out as Christen. It seemed difficult for me to believe that I had waited for so long to actually do this but I needed to be ready and comfortable in my own mind as much as I needed for my wife, Joanne, to be as well. The day itself, and what we later did afterward that evening, were a momentous and defining series of events for us both. The main and only event we were initially considering attending was a Tri-ESS chapter meeting in New Hampshire. We both had talked about this impending event with some trepidation and anxiety. There were numerous potential problems we feared we would encounter. The list was wide ranging with some of the fears bordering on ludicrous as we built up complex scenarios that we might potentially incur. Saturday morning was busy enough however to put many of those fears at bay as we scrambled to put together our contribution to a pot-luck dinner for the Tri-ESS meeting that afternoon. After that, it was...