The Fabric of Love

August 20, 2016

When we are born we are born into a fabric of life, of people's lives, into a multifaceted fabric, related through blood and love and sometimes lust and sometimes just happenstance. Sometimes our birth is celebrated, wanted, desired above all else; others are tolerated, others a burden, and some detested. Regardless of how we got here, here we are, launched into the collective of our family. If we are lucky we resonate with those around us and they like us and enjoy us and even plan summer vacations to spend time together. Others are shunned or worse forgotten and wonder what those nostalgic family movies and 4th of July ad campaigns are about.

Nevertheless, our collective, our people, are like quilt squares sewn together or knots in a giant macrame wall hanging. We are held together until there is a fire or a wielded knife or the strain of keeping everything together takes its toll and there is a hole and then a great unraveling. When this unraveling occurs many questions arise; like what was it that kept us together in the first place? Was it love? Obligation? or just happenstance? or simply something in between?

There is a popular song on the radio these days and the words are, "I love you. I hate you. I hate that I love you." The question in my mind is is love a constant and hate visits without a real place to land, or are they both more like hot and cold water faucets, each with their own handles, L and H.; easy to turn on and off at a moment's notice.

If you have read my previous blogs you might recall that I am in a standoff with my 30 year old daughter. I transitioned from female to male and even though it took a few years, she somehow got to the point of just saying "No thank you" to me and has turned her sights on other women in our family to replace me.

She and my mother are closer than ever and it really hurts. I can't bear the loss of my daughter and I also can't bear my mother's acceptance of my daughter's rejection of me. I know it is silly and that I cannot orchestrate who likes who but it is a daily source of deep pain.

One of the oddest outcomes of my transition is having a fresh set of eyes within my own skin. I am still me but I am also very different. I see how I clung to a juvenile version of me for many years, not fully maturing into a woman; I just couldn't make the leap, it wasn't me. But I also missed out on developing important parts of a mature adult and find myself now about thirty years behind my colleagues in terms of career, hobbies and a variety of ways that people enjoy their lives. This isn't anyone's fault but something I live with and ask myself daily: what do I want?

Unfortunately for me, the major driving force in my pursuit of happiness has been being a parent. The rejection by my daughter and the loss of my grandchildren leaves me hollow, like a sailboat without any wind, waiting and hoping for a gust of love to bring me to shore.

I wonder how many times I will write about this pain. Have you ever burned a part of your body? I have. I burned my hand by accidentally picking up a burner grate that was still hot after cooking. It throbbed  like hell and I kept my hand in a bag of ice that I had to replenish multiple times through the night. At some point it just stopped hurting. I just haven't gotten to that point yet.

Death Becomes Her

August 13, 2016  

I have been thinking a lot about death and dying. My daughter and her husband see me as having died and are still grieving, I think, which leaves us in this odd situation. I want to be their parent and grandparent to my grandkids, but right now I don't exist anymore. They haven't told me why they cut me off, just that they want nothing to do with me at all.

When I look back at my life of 52 years, I can finally make sense of all the disjointed experiences I had: looking like a boy, being mistaken as a boy, excelling in traditional male activities, not quite fitting in, lacking in development of Self. As a woman, these experiences were confusing and shame producing, filled with starts and stops and loss of momentum. As a man, they line up and make a perfect pathway, like a racetrack, engines revved with intensity and verve.

Remember the old Christmas tree lights? If one bulb blew out the entire string would not work. My (life) string was filled with light bulbs that did not fire. Now I can look back over my whole life, a long string of light bulbs, and see the burned out bulbs come back to life! Illumination, at last!! It makes me feel whole and in alignment with myself.

This kind of experience is what life is for: to be fully alive. I cannot help what turned out to be true for me. But it brings up some interesting ideas for me. Like what does it mean to be a mother? When are mothering duties over? Does my role in my family depend on my genitals or whether I go through menopause? What constitutes abandonment? Why aren't the love, time and care I invested in my children and family built up like a bank account; rich and steadfast, able to handle this change, yet still together?

Last Saturday was my daughter's 30th birthday. I checked her Facebook page to see if she was having a party and was going to send her a happy birthday message. Instead I saw a Mother's Day montage of pictures of women in her life with the caption: "Thank you to the women who raised me and taught me such wonderful morals and values," etc. Who was in the montage? Two grandmothers, her dad's wife and her honorary Godmother. But not her mother. Me. I had a 22 hour delivery. I breastfed her. I stayed home to raise her. I coached her soccer team when she was 5 (The Cheetahs, with team cheer "Go Cheetahs, fast as lightning, goooooooooo Cheetahs!!!), I made her a layered ice cream cake with a layer for every year until she was 12 and the cake just fell over, I stood by her through thick and thin. And in my time of needing her, where are those morals and values she described? I transitioned into manhood when she was 23 years old; plenty of time to know who her mother was and is. She certainly she didn't get this particular set of morals and values from me after all. The ladies of the montage; a big part of my family and friends who I drew into my daughter's life to strengthen us and one another, including me.

And in my lowest moment I realized that that person who is so easily discarded did in fact die and the whole lot of them can go fuck themselves. We do not share the same values at all. Sometimes people change and when they do new decisions have to be made. They do not like the person I have become; when in fact they do not know me. They think that I am less when in fact I am the same and more. But the point is they do not want to know me, just as they really did not know me before. It's not their fault that I could not fully share who I was; it is their fault that they choose not to experience the full human being I am now.

The woman I was is gone. She is glad of it because her life was filled with an intense underlying sense of discomfort and prolonged, relentless anxiety and depression. If the people in my life prefer me to live in constant pain so they can feel good, there is something wrong with them and not me!

So to my former self, I bid you a fond farewell. You were a brave woman who not only endured your own pain, but willingly soaked up the pain of others to help them on their journey. You are at peace now and free from wrongful burdens. Death becomes you! I love you and am proud to have shared my life with you! You were an awesome mother and now father. Your birth child may not understand but your adopted kids love you and get you, so go forth and prosper, and let what is dead go.

Once a mother, always a mother

August 7, 2016

Dear Friends,
I stopped writing my blog almost a year and a half ago. I did this because I found out that my mother and kids were reading it and talking about it. I don't know why I thought they would not see it. The point isn't that they read it; I was glad they did. What did stop me was that I was getting to the point where I was no longer talking about the past but the present and I realized that by continuing, I would or could be bringing them into the public eye and felt it was my responsibility to protect them.

In the meantime, I have come to realize that my family has NOT been unable to make my transition with me. They see me as two different people and are not able to apply their set of female memories to the man I am today.

My wife says she is able to combine them. That I am still the same person in my heart and values. I agree with her.

They have found substitutes for me (and my wife), but we have been waiting for them to love us, to reach out, to invite us to their celebrations, etc. But the chasm of ice just continues to expand leaving me, especially, hungry for their love.

It's an odd math equation. I was a woman, I gave birth, I had lady parts. Now I am a man with male parts. Does transformation  erase life? I don't think so, at least not for me.


I cannot describe the pain I am feeling except that it is the lowest of lows and deepest of heartaches.

I gave birth and raised a daughter. I am a man that has let go of many female qualities except when talking about my daughter. Then there is still an anguished mama bear desperate for her baby; even though her baby turned 30 yesterday.

Some things cannot be undone. Once a mother, always a mother.