A Clean Transgender Slate?

 As I sat here this morning it was one the few days I didn't have any clear idea of what I was going to write about. It also helped that neither my problem knees or back weren't really bothering me for a change. I was ready to face the world...or the computer.

Photo Credit : Jessie Hart

Of course as it usually does, my mind started to work overtime and I started to wonder if any transgender person really does ever have a clean slate when it comes to their lives. It seems to me the baggage we carry from our youth and/or the continuing gender dysphoria we experience stays with us in various forms for our entire life. 

On occasion I find my writing to be a source of personal therapy and any response I receive between here and the Medium writers format is a form of icing on the cake,  Take for example the response I received from Lsjaffee on my recent post "Whose Fault was It?" Which made a reference to the pregnancy drug DES:

"The irony is that my mom took DES because she was conditioned in the 1950s to think that women at 30 couldn’t get pregnant. Like you, I wonder what impact it had on how I turned out. But in her case, she was homophobic and transphobic (the latter I discovered late in her life when dementia ate away what little brain cells she had yet). Yet I had sympathy for her when she, in a rare moment of clarity, described being groped on the subway when she was a teenager, or how her father mentally abused her mother. It was in a letter from my mother to my grandmother that I found 10 years ago cleaning out a drawer that revealed she took DES. I tucked that revelation away until 2 years ago when I tried making sense of why I am. It’s definitely clearer now."

That comment alone helped me to take another look back at my past and showed me one of my posts could be therapeutic to others. How all of that relates to a "clean transgender slate" remains to be seen. In fact, now my devious mind is stuck on being paranoiac about landing in a transphobic nursing home in my final years of life. Finally, I am working my way out of all the needless anxiety which it fosters.

Along the way also, a "transgender clean slate" has meant to me being able to ignore the people in my life who decided not to accept my transition to my authentic feminine self. My prime example is my brother and his in laws. After my wife passed away, who took it upon herself to cook for the entire family on Thanksgiving, my sister in law inherited the task. It just so happened it was just before the holiday when I decided to come out of the closet and tell what was left of my world I was a transgender woman. Before I came unannounced to the family gathering as my new authentic self, I decided to give my brother the benefit of the doubt to see if my invitation still stood.  It turned out I wasn't and we went our separate ways. Sad but true. 

Through it all, I knew I wouldn't be able to come through my transition unscathed but more or less I did.

It's the only reason I was able to reestablish myself in the world as the person I was always meant to be and set up a new :Clean Transgender Slate." 

Always a Surprise

 This  happens to me very rarely, in fact about once every  two years and a half. Yesterday I received a friend request on Facebook from a person I ultimately decided I knew from my old male cross dressing days.  Recently I have been accepting requests from those acquaintances I have met or people who live close to me.  This person actually lives in a town I used to run a restaurant in just before I retired. So I accepted.

Almost immediately she messaged me about how much I had changed for the better. Which of course was nice. From there we exchanged niceties and remembrances concerning the places we happened to hang out  together with mutual friends. Ironically one of the friends was one I was thinking of fondly a couple days ago. He ran a neighborhood tavern I used to go to quite frequently. From his clientele which ranged into a few gay and lesbian types, I often wondered how I would have been accepted as my authentic self. Sadly I was never able to find out because I never had enough courage to try and he ended up passing away shortly after all of that. I fondly remember him as a kind man who accepted most all types in his tavern as long as they weren't trouble makers.

It only makes three people (all cis women) who I "imprinted" as my false male self now who have tracked me down over the past decade. On occasion it is fun to ponder the "what if's". What if I had thrown caution to the wind and transitioned? Even though the three women who accept me now  gladly do it, would they have done it then when the world was different as far as transgender women and men were concerned. Actually, even back in those days, I was exploring the feminine world in my own way to answer my questions about transitioning. I have written before how I had very few male friends to start with and they all died.

Even though I still knew several cis women, more importantly I was forming new friend bonds with other women so my transition was made so much easier. The photo is me with Nikki and Kim to the right. They quite possibly helped me to save my life and made my Mtf gender transition so much easier. 

Along with Kathy and Mim who invited to my first girls night outs, my gender confidence soared.

All of them including my partner Liz of course helped me to pry the transgender closet door open and allow me to finally escape. 

So. it is always a surprise when I happen upon a person who knew the "before me:" Almost to a person, no one ever guessed my "secret." Which only meant I was very successful at hiding my authentic feminine self. 

The biggest surprise was on me when I discovered how natural it all felt after I transitioned.   

 A friend of mine is working to complete his doctorial thesis and is looking for survey participants who can answer yes to the following  questions: 

1.- Do you identify as LGBTQ or Ally?

2.-Have experienced self identified spiritual religious or spiritual trauma. 

3,- Have experienced self identified growth after said trauma.

4.-Do you currently live in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky or Tennessee

5.- Are you 18 years or older.

The 15 minute anonymous survey is being conducted by Ryan Joseph Allen  at Xavier University.

The hope is the study will yield understanding and spotlight areas of future research and service to those who have experienced religious trauma and PTSD spiritual growth within the LGBTQ Plus Community.

The survey can be accessed directly from this link:

https://xavier.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6QHkickaCjCQOtw

Thanks! For further info, feel free to contact me.