Monday, November 23, 2015

Indigenous American Genocide Day

As we come upon Indigenous American Genocide Day, I reflect on this holiday I call Thanksgiving and have celebrated for 41 years. 

To me,  a white person,  with enough disposable income to afford dinner with all the trimmings,  this holiday is about family.  It's about colder weather and gathering together with people that I love, eating gluttonous amounts of food. It's about focusing on gratefulness rather than the commercial nightmare that Christmas has become. It's  the one time of year that I eat turkey.

It is my favorite holiday.  I love dinner at 12, laze about watching movies or football,  eat again at 4, take a nap,  eat some pie. Apple is my favorite pie of all time. I don't care if everyone else eats pumpkin pie. 

But what does it say about my values? My priorities? My care and concern for others?

At some point along the journey of my life, I picked up the phrase,  "Don't be sorry,  just don't do it anymore."

Taking your own advice is never easy.  How can I retain a personally meaningful tradition that is divorced from its origins?

As a white person,  I have discarded the "traditions" of my family because they seemed so meaningless. How can I honor the traditions, and lives, of others if I don't even honor my own traditions?

How do I reconcile the two?

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Transitioning

Hello. I started writing this blog when my life, as I knew it, fell apart.
 
So much has changed and happened in this past year of my life. The cascade of transitions began when BadBoi broke up with me (September 19, 2014). I met (November 2, 2014) and fell in love (December 13, 2014) with Kyle. I came out as genderfluid (February 19, 2015). I moved to Olympia, WA (April 3, 2015) and started a new job with my company. I was served with divorce papers which indicated that I was only able to see my daughter 54 days a year (Mid May 2015). I started testosterone (T) therapy (July 23, 2014) with 25 mg every two weeks. I attended Gender Odyssey (August 21-23, 2015) for the first time and was amazed to see so many non-binary people in one place.  I stepped up my T dosage for the first time (September 24, 2015) to 25 mg every week to avoid the mood swings I was experiencing in the first phase of my T therapy .  My divorce with a my ideal parenting plan was finalized (October 16, 2015).  Later this month, I will welcome a new kitten into my family and increase my T dosage for a second time, hopefully to 50 mg every week.
 
I have spent a great deal of time and energy focused inward, working to become a person I would want to be friends with. I have been exploring kink and non-monogamy, feeling out my personal boundaries on how I want to navigate these areas in my life.  I find myself coming to a place where I have the energy and inclination to reach out to my community and contribute in meaningful ways.
 
I know that there aren’t that many of you out there who routinely read this blog. Truthfully, there hasn’t been much to read here in the past few months as I have dealt with all the family transitions and hashing out the divorce and trying to finish up the short sale of the house to close out my bankruptcy.
 
I am grateful to all of you. You have read and followed and just knowing that you clicked on my page was enough to feel supported in so many ways.
 
Thank you.