The Woman Within

I must say that I do appreciate everyone taking the time to read my writings. They are, at the time at which I write, an emotional release and a way to document and later analyze and piece together seemingly disparate events into a more cohesive understanding holistically. I also hope that they bring some meaning and insight into others lives, such as your own in a relevant way. Certainly, feedback through relating events in one's own life and through comparative analysis has meant a lot to me as well in helping me to understand better, my own sense of self. I noted many's amazement in the rapidity in which I went from being closeted to being quite public. I can only validate this suddenness to my angst and anxiety which had been slowly and relentlessly building within me over the course of many years. It was akin to a balloon which was slowly inflated over time with pressure increasing to a point at which I could not contain it any longer. In getting out, I immediately surpris...

It has been a while since I posted but then again, it has been a rough time of late as well with the passing of my mom and the health issues with my dad. Things are starting to get back to a relative level of normalcy both physically and mentally which has been a positive uplift for me and for my spouse as well. The biggest news has been Christen's debut to the her spouse's family. It had started with my spouse telling her mother. To my surprise, her mother was absolutely fine and very understanding of my situation and felt empathy and concern for the struggles which being transgender has brought to me in my life. We had her come up to visit us and was thrilled to be able to go out to dinner with her newest daughter-in-law. It went so well that we had her up a second time to redo the adventure again, this time at our favorite Italian Restaurant on the shores of the "big lake". My mother-in-law told my spouse's oldest sister about me and, although she had a di...

We received the call Sunday night that my mother had been transferred from the nursing care facility and admitted to Newton Wellesley Hospital with a case of pneumonia. The call came while I was out dining with a friend and it shocked me to hear of the sudden change. On my ride back up the dark and empty interstate highway toward home, I received a call on the cellphone from one of the doctors attending to my mom's condition. He advised that we should consider the possibility that she might not recover and to prepare for the ultimate eventuality that she might die. It was definitely not the sort of thing one wants to hear while negotiating a dark interstate highway through the mountains. I arrived home but broke down in tears. It was the suddenness of all of this that had caught me off guard. I packed up and readied myself to head out on Monday to visit with her, hoping that I would arrive before she passed away. Amazingly, we received a call from the doctor's the next...

Part I - The Deceit and the Lies – Revealed.... This is the story of my learning of the possible and likely reasons for my transgenderism.  It explained a lot although I wished I new earlier in my life.  It would have helped me immensely to have quantified the feelings which have been with me my entire life.  The story starts as my family begins to fall apart...... My sister flew into Boston from her home in Las Vegas in order to spend a week with my ailing mother and to help coordinate care for her. Driving down from our home in New Hampshire, My spouse and I joined her at the hospital a few days after she had arrived. We had not seen each other in over three years and what we were to find out about each other, our own parents and most surprisingly, about my own self, were to leave me shell shocked. I arrived at the hospital on a damp and dreary Monday evening in November. I had packed the SUV and driven the 100 miles straight down to the hospital in Cambrid...

I never thought it would come to this but perhaps I always did. It was the call from my dad today. He had just come from visiting with my mom in the convalescent home where she had been moved to just a day earlier. Her fractured pelvis had stopped bleeding and she was at least physically stable. Her mental state though has been tortured to say the least, haunted by the daemons of dementia slowly robbing her mind, her identity and her will to live. The phone rang just after 5:30 this afternoon. It was my dad and he sounded to be distraught and agitated by the tone of voice in which he hurriedly spoke. "What is it dad?", I asked. "How's mom doing in her rehab?" "I'm not going back to see her tomorrow", he abruptly chattered back. "Why?", I asked him incredulously. "The social workers won't let her go home with me when she gets out - not without someone to watch over her in my house.", he tartly replied. I had a feeling t...

It was an ominous phone call received late in the evening last weekend that dampened what had been one of my best days out shopping for wedding dresses. I remember the exact moment.... I was balanced on a ladder which was precariously perched on the stairs to the basement and hanging a pendant chandelier light when the phone rang. My wife answered the phone and acknowledged to me that it was my dad. Mom had taken another fall in the house again and was sedentary on the couch. My dad didn't know whether or not to take her in to the hospital as she wasn't experiencing any pain. She couldn't walk, my dad explained to me. Stunned by that statement my spouse and I exclaimed that he needed to call an ambulance to the house immediately to have her seen. It was my mom's lack of complaint and of pain as she had lay on the couch and tended to by my dad that had both her and my dad feeling that this was just a simple bruise from a fall. Her arrival at the hospital however a...

Saturday, October 15 was a great experience for both my spouse, Joanne, and myself as we took a venture out for a day of dining and shopping. There is still some level of concern on my spouse's part with her primary fear being for my best interest. "What if someone says something or causes you trouble or harm?" she often worries. It's more about her worries of what could happen but what never seems to that worries her most. It's having been out a number of times on my own or with other friends which has helped me to gain the confidence of understanding that we are simply accepted by others as who we portray. So long as we are confident in who we are inside, and so long as we exude that confidence outwardly when we present ourselves in the greater world, there are few problems that will likely ever be encountered. Joanne and I had a wonderful lunch at a local Chinese Restaurant Saturday afternoon. Interestingly, after lunch, she snapped open her fortune cookie an...