Search Results for: story starts to grow

I’m going to the Regional LGBT Student Conference at SUNYA tomorrow. I haven’t been asked to speak, nor have I asked to speak. But when has that every stopped me from putting together a speech? Here is what I would say tomorrow:

Miz Ruby wants me to understand that I am not alone, that I need to trust my connection to others, and their connection to me.  I have trouble finding people who engage my story, rather than seeing it as some reflection of their own story. You seem to want people — everybody, or just one … Continue reading Our Story

My body betrayed me. The arc of a human life is usually to start by being embodied, sensing the world around you and feeling your responses to it, then to gain wisdom & perspective as you age, learning to keep sensations in a more thoughtful context, growing your mind and your story. For me, though, … Continue reading Body Break

I deflate too fast. This is a world that rewards the bouncy, those who rebound quickly.   Get your feelings hurt, make a faux pas, have a set back, whatever, then learn from it and keep moving on, take the next step and live. For many, trying to find a technique to bounce back is the … Continue reading Bouncy

Over the years, the more you give, the more you get. You give of yourself and what you get in return are stories, lasting memories that are the stuff of a full life. That sackful of memories is both a joy and a burden, like any other gift.  You have moments that will last forever, … Continue reading Sackful Of Memories

Looking at young people, so easy and sensual in their own skin, I sometimes try and remember what I was like when I was their age. Nakedness came difficult to me; skyclad wasn’t something I would ever try.  I kept myself covered up; one old friend was surprised she had never seen my genitals, because … Continue reading Body Of Work

Your body may be a vessel for your spirit in this world, but it is hard to argue that it is just a vessel. For most humans, the experience of being embodied defines their life.   Their gendered training and the expectations placed on them are based on their body.   Their experience of desire and being … Continue reading Disembodied

It was almost 20 years ago now.  I was chatting with an Australian while I was down there building a big e-mail system. “You know, in the future, we will be able to share things electronically.” “Yes,” I said.  “That’s good.” “We will have virtual world to enter from anywhere.” “Yes,” I said.  “That’s good.” … Continue reading Virtual Sick

You can’t tell the mothers just by looking.   They reveal themselves in their choices. I just read about the origins of cognitive therapy, where “Therapy may consist of testing the assumptions which one makes and looking for new information that could help shift the assumptions in a way that leads to different emotional or behavioral … Continue reading Moms and Moms

Trans is hot. It is a wild white heat in your heart, burning Eros that calls you to break the mould, cross the lines, break the boundaries to claim your own essential truth beyond norms and expectations. This culture, though, is cool. It expects a tame chill compliance, a frosty bearing, a kind of insulated … Continue reading Fire & Ice

“You just don’t understand!” every teenager eventually moans to their parent. “You couldn’t possibly understand!   You clearly don’t feel it deeply, like I do!   If you did, you wouldn’t be so callous and dismissive, saying that I will get over it!   This is real, real, real and deeper than you can imagine!” When emotions sweep … Continue reading You Don’t Understand!

“They wouldn’t know the truth if it slapped them on the face at high noon in Times Square!” We live in a world where what we doubt most is other people’s vision of the truth.   They keep saying things that we, for some reason, see as wildly wrong, biased, inaccurate or stupid. Maybe what they … Continue reading Incredible

The only way to change the answers is to change the question. Without a new level of thinking, a new way of seeing, we stay fixed in the standard solutions. When new questions arise, causing us great doubt about the answers we hold today, we can either turn away from the challenge or turn inward … Continue reading Consider The Kōan

Marine scientists who ply the Pacific Ocean around the US northwest have studied killer whales for a characteristic they have in common with humans but few other mammals: menopause. Why, in some species, do females continue to live on even though they are infertile and cannot add to the population? In humans and killer whales, … Continue reading Crone Knowledge

We are encouraged, in this culture, to create a movie in our mind. In that film, we see the course of life as imagination, all our hopes and dreams and wishes, all the expectations that come with us following the rules and growing up to be who we should be, the person who is the … Continue reading Shattered Film

I’m a transwoman.   I hate my voice. Not every transwoman hates her voice, but many of us do.  After all, our vocal cords went through male puberty along with the rest of us, so that golden tinkle and luscious purr that we dreamed of having went away, leaving us with gravel and grunt. At a … Continue reading Sprightly Voices

The massacre at Pulse Orlando feels to me like some outsider shot up a family picnic, murdering 50 of my kin and cutting down 50 more. Sure, they were a branch of the family that I had never met, but they were family, and if I was ever in the neighbourhood, I know I would … Continue reading Family Warp

On the old TV show, I was interviewing a runner and mentioned that I rode bicycles. He just snorted. When I asked him why, he was clear. “A bicycle carries its own momentum,” he told me.  “You can rest for a moment and keep on moving.   Running, on the other hand, takes focus in every … Continue reading Momentum

Every post on this blog starts with the phrase, “So, this is what I want to tell you. . .” Now, I have been writing for a long time and have learned that phrase tends to block the lead,  so I edit it out, but it is what I have been doing here for a … Continue reading So, This Is

When you feel the urge to make an intimate action, like holding your lovers hand in public, and then feel like the only way you can do it is as symbol, as a public statement and a political act, it takes the spontaneity and intimacy out of it, becoming the antithesis of what you wanted … Continue reading Love As A Political Act