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The B Word

For some strange reason I have been feeling pretty good lately. There isn’t one thing to pin the good vibes on to, but, things have been building up.

Two weeks ago the Pride Leadership program began with a two day retreat at a lodge in Newark, Ohio. Pride Leadership is being run by the United Way of Central Ohio. It’s the only such program in the country which selects applicants from the TLGB community to be educated on what it takes to be in a community leadership role, and/or a position on a not-for-profit Board. Needless to say, but I am the lone Trans person in the program that also includes 16 members of Project Diversity (men and women of (all) colors) making the total at the retreat 32. This is a win-win situation from a personal standpoint. For 8 months I will be trained twice a month in everything from cultural competence and resource development to parliamentary procedures, leading through conflict, racial disparities, and more. Seeing the various aspects of community service can only help make me a better, stronger person for others, and myself. Not to mention meeting 32 new people that have much better jobs than I do with degrees to spare. Good things happen when you meet good people. I am starting to really believe that.

Feeling good about the future can be a wonderful thing, and, that can lead to more potentially wonderful things. Being in TransOhio http://www.transohio.org/ has opened up the opportunity to take part in discussion panels at OSU’s main branch & the Newark campus for Gender & Sexuality courses, PFLAG meetings, and, even a group of 14-16 year old kids at a local college prep school to talk about what it’s like to be trans in today’s world. One point that’s important is to say that I only speak for me, as far as experience, and most trans individuals can, potentially, share an eerily similar story. The groups have all been great. Very receptive. So far it’s 5/5 with positive responses. mmmm, I’m feelin alright.
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A Belated Introduction

(Post inspired by this post from Donna Rose)

So, many of you have probably seen my name popping up recently in comments around here (and other places, such as 360 and Livejournal) and wondered “Who is this strange person and why is she here?”

A brief summary to start with – I am female-bodied, and female-identified (Cisgendered, or Genetic Girl). My spouse of almost 13 years is currently questioning their own gender identity, which has made me reflect on my own life and discover how much of it has transcended gender norms and led me to a place where gender identity is almost a non-issue for me.

I was raised in a small town in Southern England in the 1960s. My mother was a single parent, and we lived with two elderly, never-married sisters who had been friends of my late grandmother. Thus my home environment was very much a matriarchal one, with females performing all roles – driving, finances, home maintenance, breadwinner, as well as the traditional female roles. My mother maintained a fairly androgynous appearance and would frequently get “sir’ed”, much to her annoyance. One of the sisters ran a Cub Scout Troop which met at the house, and thus my earliest playmates were male. I preferred my ‘Action Man’ (G.I. Joe) to my dolls, my train set to my doll’s house, and spent many hours climbing trees and becoming a “little woodsman” in our vast backyard. To me, none of this seemed odd and the only difference I was aware of between boys and girls was that we used different public restrooms. As you can see from the photo of myself aged 4, I looked like the typical ‘tomboy’.

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Hi

Hi everyone I think I have found my home here at wordpress.

I am only in here briefly at this time as it would be good to know if this works first before I go on and start my story in a new place.

Leah M.

From Mars to Venus II

In 2005, while in-between moving, my room mate to be had been in contact with a trans girl who was making her way across country from Carolina way to the west coast stopping, from time to time, if she met kind-hearted people along the way who may allow her to stay for a spell. Well, she stayed at our place for a week or so, I believe, and ended up making quite an impression on me in her short time there. We went out a few times to clubs, drank too much, and just got a chance to get to know each other. The bond with trans women is already usually very strong, but she helped me find the courage, yeah, courage, see (?), to stand up straight, and be proud of who I am (I love you for that, Maya). Damn the torpedos. During her visit we had spoke of when she reached her destination of San Francisco she would call us and we had better get our butts out there as soon as we could. A nice thought, but hardly realistic. So, I thought. She left us in late summer.

Early in ’06, true to her word (though we had corresponded on-line), she called us with an invitation to come out to SF for a week, and while there, attend a GLBT job fair being held at the GLBT community center. This offer was too good for my room mate, and, I to pass up. The bonus was that we were going to be staying at the B&B our friend was working at the whole week, and at a crazy-good price to boot. The B&B house was a wonderfull place. I instantly felt at home as soon as I walked in and set my bags down. There were times when I didn’t want to leave just because I was enjoying just being able to relax without all the pressure that came with “home”. A few afternoons were spent reading in the great room while classical music massaged my nerves in the background. I could have stayed in that house forever. Continue reading

From Mars to Venus

My story isn’t much different than what you may find anywhere else, really. The early years of life was spent playing in grandmas basement after school, running around the neighborhood with my gang of friends, playing ball, jumping in the creek, roller skating (it was cool, back then), just typical kids stuff. Through grade school I was semi-popular, awkward in my tall thin body, kinda athletic, funny, and liked by teachers because I was polite and never a problem. But, oh, mother, did I have a secret.

As I began to come out of the fog and haze that was the years of Junior high school it was dawning on me how painful life was about to get as puberty was ravaging my neutral body into a fragile shell of a man. From the first day of high school I could tell that all the guys were maturing into men, and the women who had begun blossoming a year or so before were that much more beautiful, and then there was me. Needless to say gym class was weird. The locker room banter and disrobing made me feel on display for all to see my freakish self in my underwear. Hence why I didn’t always dress for gym. The anxiety trip that high school ended up being allowed for me to become quite the recreational drug user. I would go to parties with friends, blend in to the crowd, find a quiet corner, or, try and lerch onto someone so it doesn’t look like I am alone on an island. Typical parties, really, with weed, cocaine, acid, and alcohol being staples. Yeah, I was a real loser, allright. Whatever made me not want to think about who I was, and how I was just wasting away, well, I would try it- within reason. No needles (even a loser like me has principles). Continue reading

How I made the decision to transition?: April 16, 2008

I got a message today asking that very question of me. In many ways it was a hard question to answer but it also was an easy one to finally make, although it took my whole life to make the final decision. Let me give you brief history to put the answer into prospective. I always knew that I had these feeling deep down inside ( that I should have been a girl), but was way too afraid to ever let anyone ever know of these feelings. You see when I was young I got so many queues that I was a boy, at least that’s what my body told me, and my parents just reinforced that idea with the way they dressed me and the things that they would say. So even as a young child I spent all my effort to not let my parents down and did everything I could to make sure that no one would ever tell that I harbored these feelings. I locked it up behind bars and found myself in a self made prison. As a child I never expected it to affect me as it has as an adult so I went on with my life keeping the secret and finding little ways to break the anxiety.

As a child I found that when I was alone long enough, that I found joy and relief in my mother’s closet. I would spend as much time as I could dressing up and playing tea party games by myself in my mother’s walk in closet. It was a great place to hide and be myself for a while. It was a relief in those days but as I got older other feelings and emotions also started to take over, especially in my teen years. In my teens I found myself even more at odds with the way I felt and the body I had. Heck, everything in my heart and soul was telling me that I was not the person that I presented and as the girls in my school began to develop into their own, I found that my body just kept fighting with me. The testosterone became my worst nightmare. When I was younger I wished to be a girl, and now in my teens, those feeling grew even stronger as the “T” took over and began to change my body in ways I feared it would.

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Blogroll

The blogroll is finally up. Check it out in the sidebar!

Everyone who has been added as a contributor or shown interest, should have a link right now (though with people being added as I type, I could be wrong!) If you have an active 360 page, that’s what I’ve linked to – otherwise, your link is to your WordPress Blog or Livejournal.

If you would prefer to have your link go to a different page – or want an additional blogroll entry – please post the URL in comments to this post, or send me email with the details.