This piece was so beautifully written and delivered. What a great gift. Thank you. I've had similar moments... The most important wasn't one I saw coming, it was the sensation of hugging my wife and kids once I'd healed from top surgery. I've been separated from them for years without knowing it until I could finally feel them against my sternum, no barriers, just beating hearts and lungs full of hope on both sides. It was a transformative sensation and one I will never forget or get enough of. Apparently I'm a guy who hugs now. Who knew?
That's so beautiful, Robin! And I've had the same experience, after the same surgery, just adding instead of removing, and it's just as wonderful as it was for you. Hugs are just so much better now!
I’m pretty comfortable in my place on my gender journey/exploration now (I think we started at a similar time) but the other aspects of my trauma are still really hard to process.
I’m also realising more and more how much collective trauma I hold for all the lost siblings and those struggling rn 🫂💕🏳️⚧️
I’m in awe of your beautifully crafted works of art and your ability to explain a deeply technical concept so beautifully simply and without disdain. Thank you for being so open with your vulnerability it has helped me so greatly during my first year of transition and helped me to understand myself more deeply and clearly than at any time in the past.
I wish you and B a wonderful, joyous and peaceful day. xxx
Yet another profound and moving piece of which i relate to through and through. Now nearly divorced for a year, this helps me understand the trauma of emotional and psychological abuse Ive been through even before I came out to her. My therapist put it a tad differently that your piece but just the same....Brainwashed, and it will take time and pain before those pathways are rewired in my brain. I live that every day now but am determined to live my authentic true life and be happier than ever. Thank you for sharing your story and insight that others may read, learn, and grow to be at peace in this life.
Dec 26, 2023·edited Dec 26, 2023Liked by Doc Impossible
So many things here resonate with me, but the one that really stands out is growth. I don't know you, but I can see from your writing that you are becoming so much more *yourself*, and being yourself has allowed you to blossom. Transition has done the same thing for me.
I'm a software developer, and for decades that was my only creative outlet. I was good at it (still am), and it was enough. Until it wasn't.
I started writing fiction a decade ago, well before I transitioned, but even then I already knew, on a conscious level, that I was trans. My first work was a sapphic romance novella, and I've been writing romantic, speculative, and gender-diverse fiction ever since, everything from 100-word flash fiction to a 97,000-word novel. Writing was the first place I really allowed myself to explore my feelings about gender and sexuality, and it's still doing that for me today.
I also rented my very first student cello the same month I came out to my partner. That was *not* a coincidence. In the past year I've played in an LGBTQ+ orchestra and marching band (yes, marching with a cello), and it's been one of the most amazing experiences of my life. At our last orchestra concert, we played Rhapsody in Blue, and I was just a few feet away from a concert piano the size of an aircraft carrier.
For years I lived inside a box, confined by my job and family medical stuff. It was a nice, comfortable box most of the time, and I made a good home of it, but it was still a box. Writing, music, and especially transition have all been my way of bursting out of that box, exploring all the parts of myself, even the ones that family and society tell me I'm not supposed to. I am *never* going back in the box.
This piece was so beautifully written and delivered. What a great gift. Thank you. I've had similar moments... The most important wasn't one I saw coming, it was the sensation of hugging my wife and kids once I'd healed from top surgery. I've been separated from them for years without knowing it until I could finally feel them against my sternum, no barriers, just beating hearts and lungs full of hope on both sides. It was a transformative sensation and one I will never forget or get enough of. Apparently I'm a guy who hugs now. Who knew?
That's so beautiful, Robin! And I've had the same experience, after the same surgery, just adding instead of removing, and it's just as wonderful as it was for you. Hugs are just so much better now!
Beautiful and moving as always 😢🙏🫂💕
I’m pretty comfortable in my place on my gender journey/exploration now (I think we started at a similar time) but the other aspects of my trauma are still really hard to process.
I’m also realising more and more how much collective trauma I hold for all the lost siblings and those struggling rn 🫂💕🏳️⚧️
Yeah... I wish it were possible to be trans in the west and not be traumatized by society, but...
🫂🫂🫂
I’m in awe of your beautifully crafted works of art and your ability to explain a deeply technical concept so beautifully simply and without disdain. Thank you for being so open with your vulnerability it has helped me so greatly during my first year of transition and helped me to understand myself more deeply and clearly than at any time in the past.
I wish you and B a wonderful, joyous and peaceful day. xxx
That's wonderful, Steph. I'm really glad to have been able to be a part of your journey.
Yet another profound and moving piece of which i relate to through and through. Now nearly divorced for a year, this helps me understand the trauma of emotional and psychological abuse Ive been through even before I came out to her. My therapist put it a tad differently that your piece but just the same....Brainwashed, and it will take time and pain before those pathways are rewired in my brain. I live that every day now but am determined to live my authentic true life and be happier than ever. Thank you for sharing your story and insight that others may read, learn, and grow to be at peace in this life.
So many things here resonate with me, but the one that really stands out is growth. I don't know you, but I can see from your writing that you are becoming so much more *yourself*, and being yourself has allowed you to blossom. Transition has done the same thing for me.
I'm a software developer, and for decades that was my only creative outlet. I was good at it (still am), and it was enough. Until it wasn't.
I started writing fiction a decade ago, well before I transitioned, but even then I already knew, on a conscious level, that I was trans. My first work was a sapphic romance novella, and I've been writing romantic, speculative, and gender-diverse fiction ever since, everything from 100-word flash fiction to a 97,000-word novel. Writing was the first place I really allowed myself to explore my feelings about gender and sexuality, and it's still doing that for me today.
I also rented my very first student cello the same month I came out to my partner. That was *not* a coincidence. In the past year I've played in an LGBTQ+ orchestra and marching band (yes, marching with a cello), and it's been one of the most amazing experiences of my life. At our last orchestra concert, we played Rhapsody in Blue, and I was just a few feet away from a concert piano the size of an aircraft carrier.
For years I lived inside a box, confined by my job and family medical stuff. It was a nice, comfortable box most of the time, and I made a good home of it, but it was still a box. Writing, music, and especially transition have all been my way of bursting out of that box, exploring all the parts of myself, even the ones that family and society tell me I'm not supposed to. I am *never* going back in the box.
It was a fine box and got me through it, but *fuck* that box.
This *new* box I have here, however, quite a good box. ;P