The Woman Within

I was up early this past Sunday morning.  I haven't been sleeping all that well through most nights, my mind racing with so many thoughts, emotions and fears.  The sun was shining brightly on this early September Morning, and with the passage during the night of a strong cold front, fall was now unofficially here.  I ambled over to the kitchen and soon found myself standing over the sink as I washed and scoured the dishes, pots and pans that lay there from the night's dinner before. As I stood in silence, with the only other sound being that of the water running from the faucet, a vision of my mom in that moment arose.  There were many times that, as a child, I would awaken early on a weekend to find her in the kitchen doing the same thing as I was doing now.  I would ask her, "Why are you up so early doing dishes?". Her response to me was always the same.  "This is my time to myself." I understood, in the moment I was in now, just what she meant when...

I don't really know how to start some of my posts sometimes, so perhaps I should just cut to the subject straight away and go from there....... So with that...."I've come to talk with you again" I've been in something of a "dark place" of late, at least until recently.  There have been more than a handful of days that I wonder about why it is I bother to get up in the morning.  I shrug those thoughts off as I fight to dispel them over a cup of coffee and an array of busy-work to keep myself occupied.  It's hard to explain and a lot of it, I am quite sure, has much to do with the nature of who I am and the emotive states I entertain as part of the embodiment of who I am "Because a vision softly creeping Left its seeds while I was sleeping And the vision that was planted in my brain Still remains" I know that I am quite fortunate for many things and that in comparative terms, there are many who would simply scoff at what wou...

An affirming day yesterday.  I "thought" I was in my guy mode with my natural hair and no makeup and just a  collared shirt and Jeans.  I was up in the White Mountains of NH playing "tourist" at the Flume Gorge.  Along the walking trip, there was a point where one could diverge through a small jumble of rocks that made for a tight, dark, one way passage through to the other side.  A mother and young daughter saw me turn around and signal to J to try it, but alas, this was not her cup of tea.  On my way through, I used a pocket LED flashlight to light my way and then turned around to help the little girl, just ahead of her mother, to find her way through the cavernous rock jumble.  The mother thanked me and reassured her daughter by telling her to "follow the nice lady with the flashlight". The Flume Gorge and Walkway Later, while taking close-up pictures of butterflies that were alighting on a wooden safety railing to catch some rest and some ...

Sometimes we never fully appreciate the dysfunctionality of our families until we are much older.  By then, many years and decades of our lives have passed and we come to look back at our childhood with eyes anew, as if we were looking upon our lives as a different person than we were.  My very wise 17 year old nephew once said to me that we each live multiple lives over the course of our lifetime.  As we grow to learn about ourselves, we grow internally, both spiritually and intellectually.  Our desires, goals and perspectives evolve as we become ever more aware and self conscious of the lives we have lived, the lives around us we have touched or that have touched us in some way, and as we evolve within ourselves. In looking back on my own childhood, I can sense it all anew from the perspective of having lived through it and grown into a person who has become self-aware of her own identity and the world around her.  I can eerily look back upon my youth and trul...

Many times, people see us as they first came to know us.  An example of this happened today when I stopped in at my skincare aesthetician.  They first came to know me as male years ago when I first started going there for treatments.  I was known by my male name and the pronouns were always "he, Him, and His".  About a year ago I showed up in full on girl mode after announcing just prior that I was transgender.  There was no problem in pronoun switches to the feminine when I did show up in this manner and "She" and "Her" along with my name being used as Christen were the rule. Today, I showed up in what I like to call my "twilight zone" mode.  It's a gender neutral sort of mode in which I wear no makeup and usually don just a women's polo shirt in either blues, or blacks and a pair of casual, relatively neutral women's jeans.  Interestingly, when I arrived for my appointment the pronouns were "He" and "His" and m...

 I was looking back and reviewing the recent Laverne Cox cover on the upcoming issue of Time Magazine and in awe of this as a yet another marker of how far we have come in transgender issues within even the past year.  We are finding, as transgender individuals, increased visibility within the greater world from all that we are doing.... each and every one of us who proudly herald and proclaim our own sense of self.  The people we touch, whether it be one or one hundred thousand, makes little difference.... because together we ARE bringing light to where there was once only myth, fable and darkness.  I see Laverne Cox as one of a select few individuals who are as I would call as "keystones" in a gateway to understanding.  She, like many of the popular transgender role models today, fit easily into the "gender binary box".  This is to say that they fit with physical characteristics into either a very male or very female box.  Many of our transgen...

A couple of random incidents yesterday combined to really light up my day and reaffirm my faith in hope for the human race.  I will admit that it is often simply the very few individuals who conspire to make life an obstacle course of hurdles and whose actions shadow the majority of the good and the love which truly permeates the world at its core. I was in BJ's yesterday stocking my shopping cart with the necessities of life and, for the life of me, could not find the one last item I was looking for.... a case of Annie's Macaroni and Cheese.  I spied a woman busily stocking a shelf and assumed she was a store employee.  I approached and asked her if she knew where the Mac and Cheese was and she replied that she was simply a contract vendor and not a regular store employee.  I apologized for my assumption and we engaged in small talk for a few moments in the crowded store. I consigned myself to the fact that I would be one item short of my list when I headed to t...