Monday, August 8, 2016

It's My Life and YOU Can't Have It!

I have a real busy weekend to go over with you kids which is one of the reasons I missed a couple days blogging.

Friday evening Liz and I rushed to our Tarot card reading class for the second time. I have little to no knowledge of the cards and am always petrified about getting embarrassed in a class...specifically when the instructor keeps screwing up my pronouns, which I hate.

Rider-Waite Tarot cards.  See more Tarot card pictures.Of course I told her I did (hate the he word) and she turned the tables back on me not in an unpleasant way during a trial reading I was doing. The person I was reading for was anticipating a relationship problem and the cards (not me) said use caution. If you believe in Tarot or not is not the basis of this post...the instructor came around and said what would I say if she (instructor) was my sister and I said be very careful. What went unsaid between the three of us was our perception of the high percentage of men who can't be trusted.

At that point she said my dual gendered past was exactly what would make me such an intuitive reader and that is why sometimes she can't get up off the  "he" word with me.



In a quiet moment with her, I will have to explain my thoughts on gender fluidity and aura and maybe we can start all over. Because I don't think necessarily tossing out 50 plus years in the male world is a bad thing. Plus she is a lesbian and I am transgender which often (I have found) is the hardest bridge to cross.

So she can have a sliver of my life to knaw on but in the next post I have a couple others that won't.

Friday, August 5, 2016

Manchester's Transgender Beauty School


Based on Sackville Street in the city's Gay Village, Born UK is an all-encompassing service – from voice training to relationship advice - designed to better the lives of the city’s transgender people. Eyebrow reshaping also plays its part in the process and that’s where wax-specialist Sam Marshall comes in: “I remember seeing Jaimie for the first time and thinking 'Wow she's pretty, who is she?' 
Sam says she’s been enamoured by trans women ever since a part-time trans woman volunteered for a live male waxing tutorial. "Michelle would turn up to the male waxing tutorials as Steve, go in the toilets get changed and come out as Michelle.

For more, go here.

The Born UK team
The "Born" Team Trans Women Grace and Kate

Don't Jump into the Deep End Until You Can Swim

Most likely one of the top questions I get is-when/why did I decide to go full time.

At once it is the simplest and most complex answer I give.

First of all, I had to feel comfortable. For me that alone took years. Then that answer leads to another-how did I begin the process of feeling comfortable?

I was in the position to take the process rather slow once I got out of the heels and hose in the mall mode I was in. I give my deceased wife credit for that after she began to call me "pretty,pretty mirror princess."

I began to eat/drink at restaurants and go to safe rather civilized places like book stores etc. What I realized I was slowly building confidence to see if I wanted to live a feminine existence at all and was I indeed transgender and not a cross dresser.

To me the so called "deep end" came when I started HRT. I began the estrogen therapy and almost immediately began to feel the changes, mostly emotional. Plus I gained a group of friends who went a long way in bringing out the woman I am today.

Two in particular pushed me off the gender cliff I was on and into the deep end.

Now, I am so fortunate to call a whole group friends and they were the ones who taught me how to swim more than I can say. I guess in my case it took a village to build a transgender woman.

Back to the advice? I really don't have any (sigh) except to try the world out and be ready for a few bumps and bruises on the way. There isn't a right or wrong way to be transgender.

Good News from the Doc

Image from JJ Hart. Yesterday was my Hematology appointment at the Cincinnati Veteran's Administration hospital.     The hospital itself...