The Long Way 'Round

What to do I find it hard to know; The road I walk is not the one I chose Lift Me Up -Trevor Rabin I cant believe that I just spent the last half hour writing absolute shit instead of facing my demons. I'm so full of fury and misdirected rage, and I don't have anyone to talk to. This blog is supposed to be my testimony, and yet I am avoiding talking about the things I need to bring to the light of day. So lets just get to it. I am talking about sexual violence. Worse, the kind perpetrated by an adult on a defenseless child.  With the news of Dr Larry Nasser and the you Olympian women who as girl were violated by this fucking monster. How could an adult do this to a child? So many children? The fallout from Larry Nassar's sexual abuse is just beginning I was that defenseless child. My crime? I was born transgender. My horrified parents dragged me from doctor to doctor in an attempt to "fix" their "son", until they came across a monst...

'If you want me to come with you, then that's all right with me. Cause I know I'm going nowhere, and anywhere's a better place to be... Anywhere's a better place to be. ' - Harry Chapin Transitioning, as I have been discovering, is so much more than just a check list or a series of steps to get from point A to point B. Were it so simple, were it not so god-damned exhausting! It wasn't that long ago when I can remember wishing for this experience to not be so terrifying. Huh! Be careful what you wish for. I have made a conscious decision that I am not going to try and rush through this part of the journey, to not treat this as some necessary evil. That has turned into an admission of vulnerability, giving in to intimacy with people whom I care deeply for and love, words that I've never before committed to any form of written expression much less verbalized out loud. That's the terribly high price of physical, emotional and verbal abuse, of a li...

I woke up this morning wanting to cry. I certain I'm not the first trans woman who has felt this way during transition, and I'm sure I wont be the last. I am such a mixed bag of emotions right now... anger, frustration, too many to process. I am struggling to find the positive emotions, I just can't draw from that well at the moment... I am now tackling the toughest part of coming out -- coming out to those whose response / reaction is unknown. And herein does not lie the problem. It was the reaction from a close friend from whom I thought I could draw strength, compassion, and support. I thought she was on board. She has a doctorate in psychiatry, one would imagine that she would be prepared to handle most anything. So to find that I was not welcome this week at their table, and worse, that she used her adult children as a thinly veiled excuse for "not being ready yet" really just upset and infuriated me. I of course said nothing on the phone. I was in shock. ...

One of the many items on the checklist towards transitioning is that of legal name change. At the very least, trans women want to shed the male name assigned to us at birth for the name we choose for ourselves that best describes how we see ourselves. Some trans folks may cycle through more than one name before finally settling on name that feels comfortable and "right". But what about our last name? That all depends... some completely reject anything connected with their past, including the family name they were born with. Others may choose to keep their last name for a variety of reasons. I suppose for myself I couldn't imagine changing my last name. The reasons were many, and some weren't immediately obvious to me. On one hand, having been raised by physically and emotionally abusive parents, I could not seem to break free of the shackles that bound me to the family name which I felt I was obligated to. Worse, I felt tremendous guilt abandoning my surname whi...