“Have you ever found people to play with you?” she asked, following a support group we facilitated where I had brought out my inner Southern Belle, going all Sugarbaker to talk about the importance of play to discover our shadow selves. “You must have played alone a great deal as a child,” echoed in my … Continue reading Playing Alone
With two Aspergers parents, I was adultified early. They had no idea how to enter the emotional world of a child, how to engage my feelings and affirm my safety. Instead, my family nickname became “Stupid” from at least the age of eight or nine because I was so baffling to them, appearing so contrary. … Continue reading Being The Grown-Up
The blessings of the one true and ultimate God is that he wants you to be as successful as you can dream of being, having all the joys and luxuries that you are entitled to as his child. This is the essence of the prosperity gospel, an occult blending of Christian words and success ideas, … Continue reading God Loves My Ego
I’m okay until I open my mouth. It’s then that the queer comes out. No matter how much I try to look cute and little and whatever, my big voice spills out of my mouth and then I tend to queer up the joint. Is that a bad thing? Well, when you are with your … Continue reading Queer Up The Joint
What do we do with the parts of ourselves that we have been taught are too intense, too overwhelming, too queer to show in polite society? Where do we put the aspects of our nature that people have told us are just too big to fit in, too strange to be acceptable, too risky to … Continue reading Make Art
Did I ever really have a personal voice? I know that I have a service voice, the voice of the concierge. I can take care of others, helping them develop their own voice. I know that I had a written voice, constructed texts that have attempted to share my learnings, my experience, my feelings. But … Continue reading Lost Voice
Having the zest to really commit to a performance — from a turn on-stage to chairing a business meeting to just being a mommy — depends a great deal on how safe, understood, affirmed, mirrored and protected you feel when you are backstage. A place where you are out of the spotlight, the pressure off, … Continue reading Backstage Meta
I grew up living inside the question rather than in the answer. Doubt was the only tool I had to move between the sliding slabs that tore at me, from the Aspergers views of my parents to the conventionality of the schools, from the lovely conflicting truths of science to the power of religious belief, … Continue reading Loss Liminal Life
My doctor is changing their patient portal, so it was suggested I download my charts for archiving. One diagnosis in the list caught my eye. Grief. It’s on there because they know I directly cared for my parents in their last decade. I don’t think, though, my doctor understands how grief is part of the … Continue reading Good Grief
“I took care of my partner while he was sick, until he passed three months ago,” one man at my Sage Table said. At that moment, all the women cooed in sympathy and commiseration, showing that they felt the emotional impact, wanting to convey their support to him in his time of loss. It was … Continue reading Aging Sighs
I’m dying as fast as I can. Æsthetic denial demands letting go of desires, of wants, releasing the projected needs that serve our comfort rather than our existence. In many ways, the death of the ego is a key part of the death of the temporal. By choosing to feed the call of spirit rather … Continue reading As Fast As I Can
It turns out that the perfect training for being a guru is having your ego destroyed before the age of two. Apparently, the earlier you find out that your desires & intentions are irrelevant, that the only way to be smart & safe is to let go of your own needs and serve the universe, … Continue reading Ego Blown
Many people see my sharp, open and disciplined disciplined mind. What they don’t seem to see is that mind was structured as scaffolding to protect and repair my big, battered femme heart. It is my heart that quickly makes connections, sensing the love or fear, the twists or truths in the world around me. It … Continue reading Scaffolding
You can’t emerge as trans in the world without leaving home. To become new, moving beyond the expectations your family placed on you from birth, you have to separate from the old. For many people, this becoming new means becoming part of a new family, finding a new home, a place where the expectations and … Continue reading Homeless
I’m really good in the moment. I stay focused, listen hard, respond clearly, look calm and centred. It’s afterwards that the stress just pounds me hard, leaving me with symptoms like a huge headache and a need to go into the silence. I had to call in a complaint to a beverage company today, and … Continue reading PTSD
My life has been profoundly shaped by my experience of my family because that experience shaped my expectations of the will, my coping techniques, and, at least to some degree, my character. We are formed by our developmental experiences and that formation shapes the direction of our life. I was just looking at a link … Continue reading Shaped
In the new HBO series “Westworld,” Thandie Newton plays an android whose role is to serve the guests in a futuristic theme park, playing her part in an interactive story that contains a lot of fucking & fighting, including shootouts. She was asked by Vulture about the challenges of playing a robot whore, the madam … Continue reading Service Bots
David Letterman recently spoke to the New York Times about Donald Trump. He was incensed that someone who treated other people, especially those less fortunate than he is, in such a reprehensible way has any credibility left whatsoever. The secret to Dave is simple. Underneath that cranky, curmudgeon façade, the old cuss is just a … Continue reading Opaque & Obtuse
I’ve been doing some business books recently, Nike, Disney and the like. The message that comes through is that work is war, that success is what counts and winning only comes through combat. You are only as good as your last achievement, so if you aren’t willing or able to battle today, well, get off … Continue reading Battle Beaten
“It’s so nice to see you!” “It’s so nice to be seen!” I imagine, she said, that it must be nice to be seen. Sometimes it amazes me how little human contact I have. For my birthday, I got two e-mails and a text message. Later, I got to accompany my sister while she bought … Continue reading So Nice To See You
