Melissa and Paula Go to Washington

I know that a few of you old timers and fans of Jimmy Stewart remember the old film “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”. Well, this week Paula and I traveled from Columbus Ohio for NCTE’s Lobby Days in DC which involved briefings, meetings and training as well visits to our US Congress members and members of the US Senate seeking what none of us really should have to beg for – rights, dignity and freedoms that every American citizen should have in our society. Specifically we asked them and offered many reasons why they should support the “Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act (HB 1913) which is established to amend existing laws so as to deter acts of violence and hatred against those in the transgendered community as well as the other equally important categories such as sexual orientation, women (gender) and those with disabilities. The religious right wing Nazis have been hard at work in opposition to this bill on the grounds that their “preachers” will be somehow subject to liability under the Act for condemning us to hell and back! The members of Congress are confused by the laws because they believe this blatant lies.
I can tell you the strategy is one of the old adages….if you tell the lie many times and convince many people of the lies then it somehow becomes true. What bullshit this is…say the lie six million times and it does not make it true. The truth of the matter is that “preachers” will be able to spew their doctrine all they wasn’t because it is protected by the First Amendment freedoms of freedom of religion And expression. However, if some low life moron in the “preachers” congregation decides that because we are all going to hell that it’s ok to attack me and try to harm me or kill me to speed up this process, that person is subject to criminal liability under the provisions NOT the “preacher”. The amendments under the bill increase funding to local agencies and increased resources from FBI to local agencies to aid in the investigation and prosecution of these crimes. Finally the bill expands when the terms apply and does not limit it to just voting and other such actions. Local law enforcement officials, prosecuting attorneys and Sheriffs Association all support the bill. So do many religious organizations that believe in the principles that actions must be taken to discourage hatred and violence against the marginalized communities. The bill has passed the House as of Wednesday April 29th and now heads to the Senate for possible passage. I hope and pray that it does and that those who have worked so hard against its passage from the religious right burn in hell for their support of violence against the LGBT communities! Hate is not any religious value to be promoting and I also believe that lying as they are doing in this smear campaign against this important piece of legislation is also against the principles of the Ten Commandments.
The other issues we lobbied for included ENDA (Employment Non Discrimination Act) as well as the upcoming issues involving health care and insurance for those in the LGBT communities. ENDA is a huge and important piece of legislation for those in the LGBT community because it ends employment non discrimination against the last two unprotected groups in the US (currently the protected classes include gender, race, age national origin, physical handicap, religion etc). The last bastions of discrimination in this country include discrimination based on one’s sexual orientation and gender identity. Of course the objections of extending protection to these groups stems not on legal grounds but on religious grounds. (You know once God condemns us in obscure text sections of the old testament written by men and copulated from many sources and translated so many times one’s head nearly spins that’s it folks – no rights and dignity for you by a government built on the principles of separation of church and state. Never mind there is NOT one single mention of lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered people or any condemnation thereof based on the new testament which, by the way, is the basis of how Christianity got started in the first place. I swear that these religious right wing zealots believe that the world will come to an end if these pieces of legislation are enacted
Health care issues will also be on the horizon as well. These include prohibiting discrimination against those in the LGBT communities by health care providers and insurance carriers. We will also seek to include transitional health care costs in the legislation. We spent a good part of Sunday evening socializing and meeting others who had come to lobby. This year’s NCTE Lobby days were the largest on record with just over 200 transgendered people and allies involved in the process. Paula and I met so many new and wonderful friends which only served to remind us how beautiful and talented and caring the people of our community are and how many of us are prejudged by so many so wrongly in our society. Hugs felt so good and I so wish that others in society could see the warmth and talent that exists in our community. Monday was a day filled with briefings and training sessions to learn more about the legislation and issues involved as well as practice on lobbying. Finally at the end of the day each state delegation met plan our strategies for meeting our representatives and senators. For Paula and I that met meeting two Republican Congressman and one Republican US Senator (Voinovich) on the capitol for lobbying. The Congressmen both voted against the Hate Crimes bill despite our best efforts but one of them was so paranoid about meeting us he actually stood behind the door and listened to us but would not greet us while we met his aide for fear I guess that we might be contagious. Senator Voinovich is a different story. He has pledged his support for the Hate Crimes Bill and remains undecided on ENDA. More work is needed to educate and seek his support on this crucial piece of legislation. Senator Brown will support us on these bills as well. At the end of a very long day on Tuesday we took our group photo on the capitol steps and had a nice reception on the patio of a local establishment.
We know we have much work to do but I know we will continue to write, call and visit these people and push them on these important issues! If necessary Paula and I will go back to DC! I know we plan to return for lobby days again next year too and I encourage anyone who has not done so to come if you can. If you can’t come to Lobby Days then write and call and meet your representatives and senators in their local offices. I do sense a change in Washington and in this country but we cannot let up one bit my sisters and brothers- as the right wing will only take its setback in the House on the Hate Crimes Bill as a need to step up their attacks and lies against the LGBT communities. It will get vicious before it is all done- believe me. However, I know the talent and passion that exists in our community and if we all work hard on these issues and in our efforts we can be successful in bringing about changes so long needed in society! Maybe someday when hate and prejudices and discrimination will have little role in our society and everyone can see the world will not come to end because all people have rights and dignity and opportunities in this country built on the premise of equality and life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness!

Pictured above is Paula and I with Erica from Minn and Debbie from Virginia at the NCTE Reception

The Middle Years- Repression,Lies and Living in a Shell

…………………in this second part of my reflections on my life as I draw closer to my GCS next month, I continue the process by reflecting on a dark and ugly period in my life known as my middle years. I was considering doing a slide show on this period as I did last week in my first part of the reflections on my early years, but this so called middle period in my life was not a particularly joyous one. I do not mean to say that my early years were spectacular but they paled in comparison of what was to come. I do offer up a picture of myself at age 24 at the height of my deep repression and denial of my true self. It was one of the few times I actually smiled because I had to- the picture was taken for my class composite for my law school class. It hangs in the hallowed halls of the West Virginia University College of Law. It was taken two months after I married my now ex-wife of 24 plus years and the mustache I spouted during my period of deep repression and denial as depicted in this photograph took me over 7 years to grow. That should have told me that it should have never been there in the first place but it was all part of my attempt to live life as the person everyone thought I was and not who I truly was in life.
I have been told by some in our community that we should not show such pictures to outsiders because that will give them a false image of who we are and that it only leads to their confusion and difficulty in acceptance of our true spirit and essence and how we now present that spirit and essence in our lives in the proper gender. I am not overly thrilled by this picture by any means- but it is reflective of a period in my life that existed and without which I could not be where I am today despite its pain, repression, ugliness and the encasement of my true spirit and essence in a tightly wound cocoon I would affectionately call my shell. The image in the shell and depicted in the photo was not who I truly was- but was how others saw me through their eyes if they could not see my soul! This period of my life was one of repression, denial and entrapment -all built on a mountain of lies and deceit! I don’t have to tell most of you that these are not things to build a life upon by any means! Feel free to print it out and post it up on a dartboard for target practice if you like.
As I mentioned in the last blog I almost told my parents when I was 14 about me being transgendered but, at the last moment, I chickened out and told them a lie. Lying about this secret became easy to do. The first thing one has to do is lie to yourself and the rest of the lying comes easy. High School brought about diminished time for my expression of my true essence and my emersion of myself into typical male activities like sports such as football, baseball and track. Football was the worst. I was small in size anyway and the drudgery of three a day practices and coming off the field grimy and beat up was something my father - but I know I did not. I would sometimes head to the locker room and see the cheerleaders practicing as I did and in my mind I knew I belonged there and not headed to the stinky locker room to hear stories of male conquest of people I connected with as my sisters. I was convinced however, that if I immersed myself in masculine activities I could rid myself of these feelings of femininity and be the person everyone believed I was and I guess also how I physically appeared. I wanted to go to the prom so badly in a beautiful gown and heels with a lovely corsage but ended up in a tuxedo.
After high school I started college with the understanding I would attend law school after my undergraduate work. In all honesty, I wanted to go into culinary arts but felt everyone would grow suspicious of me if I did so somehow I convinced myself that a life as a lawyer would provide a nice cover for me and a pleasant life. While in college I ended all expressions of Melissa, cut my hair and joined a fraternity which would provide me with more cover of my true self and more immersion into masculine activities that would drive this deeply hidden identity from me. I was convinced it could work and Melissa would go away, or at the very least, I could control her and keep everything neatly in check. It was in college I met my ex-wife and I fell in love with her for she was a kind, attractive and intelligent woman. Desd[ite the fact I knew I was a woman born in the wrong body I was still very much attracted to woman- both sexually as well as socially. Additionally, I was convinced that if I settled down and got married and raised a family like “men” were expected to do, that again, I could end once and for all the existence of Melissa and any feelings I had would go away.
In reality, in the back of my mind I knew it would not work for although I had deeply wrapped my true self in a tightly wound shell built on lies and deceit, there was always this little voice there- a tiny seed in the deepest recesses of my mind and soul that told me I was a liar and that I was kidding myself about controlling my true spirit. However, the early years of our marriage were good. I had begun a prosperous legal career for one of the most prominent law firms in the West Virginia, was on my way to owning my first home and in 1985 my first child was a born- a beautiful little girl named Rachael. She was born 9 and ½ weeks early and lived in the NICU for over six weeks but I was on top of the world when we brought her home and I spent much time holding her in my arms. I was a father and I had responsibilities to this beautiful, bright child which I truly wish I could have carried and delivered myself. Melissa was in check and I was becoming a prominent member of the local society involved in many civic activities and charities which occupied my time and helped kept my thoughts away from facing my true self.
However, by 1988 the shell which had built up for the past 12 years or so began to shed a few thin layers. No matter how much I tried I could not stop thinking about my true identity and expression of her. I shaved off the ridiculous mustache and removed some of the scant body hair on my body and soon I began presenting Melissa again in the privacy of my own home or in a hotel room when I was out traveling for work. Still, I believed I could control this and a few more lies to myself and others would take care of this “problem”. Four years into my marriage I decided I needed to tell my wife something for I knew it was only a matter of time before I was discovered. However, just like with my parents fourteen years earlier, I did not tell her the truth and I simply told I was a cross dresser -although I knew deep down that was not true but maybe I could control it that way and move on with my life. She took it pretty well after some struggles but why not – she thought it was some sort of a fad. A year later, I presented myself to her as Melissa for the first time thinking we could move further on the issue but that would be the last time in my life until our separation and divorce she would see my true essence. She cried and stated she never wanted to see me again that way. I was disappointed but I saw the pain in her face and knew that she would not even discuss going beyond what had already been discussed the year earlier and I did not want to hurt her further. From that point on, all of my activities as Melissa would be done under a policy best defined by Donna Rose in her book “Wrapped in Blue” as the period of “Don’t Ask- Don’t Tell”. I expressed Melissa whenever I could, chatted with others online and researched everything I could on being transgendered and dressed at home when she was gone and when I was alone out on the road. All I did was build more lies and deceit that years later would be thrown at me by my wife and many others.
In 1990, my second child was born- a son named Ian. That same year I became a partner in the law firm, helped my wife go back to school and begin work on new college degrees so she could do something she had a gift and passion for in her life. She graduated years later and began her new career in speech language communications working with my challenged children with special needs. I admired her for her work and she was very talented and had a gift for helping children. We moved to a bigger home, bought more cars and lived life in comfort. I spent much time involved with my children’s activities at school, scouts, sports and church. By age five my son had taken a great interest in the game of baseball and he was exceptionally good at it. He went onto play Minor league, Little League, Babe Ruth and High School baseball for thirteen years as a left-handed pitcher with good control and many accomplishments behind him including a near no hitter in his Freshman year. I followed his career with great interest and loved watching him play the game he was so talented at and excelled in for so many years. This afforded me more opportunities to be involved in things that kept my mind off the issues that had confronted me all my life in denial, repression and wrapping the shell so tightly such as coach, umpire, League President and Vice-president . Now I did accomplish some wonderful things which benefited the boys and girls who were involved in the programs-, but my involvement, while meritorious, did little to resolve the core issue that had haunted me since I was six. Both my children were very bright like their mother and excelled in school. I was very proud of they accomplished in their lives but I know I constantly wondered how they would act and how they would respond to learning the deeply hidden truth about their father. I was to find that out later in my journey as well.
By the mid 1990’s I was living the “American dream”, all while living the great lie which seemed, for a time, to go away for a bit when I spent hours pouring liquor down me in large quantities to kill some pain. Some around me I think sensed my excessive alcohol intake when I indulged was too excess but they said nothing. I had created a persona that was contrary to my real self and feelings and soon everyone had adopted it. I came off as the “the anal retentive you know what” who was a successful employment and labor lawyer for companies, a young Republican who everyone assumed was “somewhat to the right of Attila the Hun” to quote several of my colleagues. I was also known as the baseball guy for my work over the years as outlined above. All of these images would hide the real me deep inside my shell and perpetrate the lies and images which would one day come back to haunt me. Lies have a way of doing that you know!
I was traveling a good deal for work which enabled me to get away and spend a few hours in my true gender presentation. Still, I had not ever ventured outside the boundaries of my hotel room or home. I longed to do so and one trip to New Orleans during this period provided this opportunity for me. I was convinced by a transgendered girl named Carla to use the weekend I had free after my conference had ended to come out in public for the first time as Melissa in 1995. I was scared to death to do so but she helped me overcome my fears, set up a makeover for me and agreed to meet me for a night on the town. I remember that night vividly. I took my first steps outside the door of my hotel room after a brief pause at the door to walk to the place we would meet down the street for a drink and then off to a party in the French Quarter. It was a wonderful high for me.
The moment I left the confines of my room and ventured into the streets I felt alive and the memories of the first experience in my neighbor’s basement so long ago came rushing back to me. I was free and when we entered the party at the house I realized for the first time I truly was not alone or among the handful of scattered misfits- as the room had over sixty people in it like me there -all welcoming and accepting. I was indeed so happy. After the party many of us went out to the clubs and had more fun dancing and partying being my true self. When the night was over I remember my friend Carla dropping me off at the hotel and I strolled into the lobby knowing that I would never again hide Melissa from the world and that I loved getting out in the world as her. After that night, I began using my travels as opportunities to get out in public, doing things I loved to as Melissa and make contact with others like me. I went shopping, met others for dinner or even ventured out to day at the lake or beach. I could not wait for these opportunities to come and loved presenting my true self to the world but still- there was my life back in West Virginia with my wife and two children and the suits and ties. This false life was built on the respect of the community as a lawyer and partner for a prominent law firm, the baseball guy and image of Mr. Republican (although people never knew how I had really voted in the privacy of my voting booth!) Everyone just sort of assumed things although I did really nothing to deter their false image because it kept the shell on with a few more layers.
However, each venture out as Melissa all over the country brought me renewed hope and joy and each time I had to go back to the image I had spent years creating- living in my shell, I spent hours crying and living in a secret depression- all covered up by my the consumption of lots of alcohol on a more frequent and excessive basis. I was full of anger and repression and many times my family, friends, colleagues and legal opponents were the witnesses of or the victims of this anger and shouting - all while unknowing of the deep, dark secret that clouded my life for so long and created so much pressure upon me along with the effects of a very stressful job with many demands. Each venture out living life as Melissa brought me so much happiness but it also brought me guilt over my family’s lack of knowledge of what I was doing and who I really was I as a person. The guilt fed the anger and depression and both of these fed the need to express my true self as if I was caught up in a loop all while be hidden inside my shell. I woke up many days wondering whether the nightmare would ever end and I could find peace in my work…my life and my family and live my life as who I truly am and have always been.
The shell had taken a few hits and thrown off a few shreds but it was still very much intact as I moved into the new decade of the millennium. Its very existence, however, was threatened from a spirit blossoming inside of me as well as those “forces” on the outside in the form of the many people I continued to meet from my troubled community as well as some family issues lurking on the horizon. I knew my journey and healing was a long way from being complete but the path would grow shorter from all the forces about to converge upon me……………

The Early Years- Dicovery, Fear and Guilt

It is now just over four weeks before I undergo a procedure that only a few years ago I thought I would never be undergoing in my life as I continued to live my life inside a shell I had created to hide my true essence of who I am and always have been- Melissa. I thought that in the few weeks that remain before I undergo my Gender Confirmation Surgery (GCS) at the skilled hands and vision of my surgeon, Dr. Christine McGinn, I would take this opportunity to reflect back on the various periods of my life, asses my final thoughts as I enter these last stages of my physical transition although I fully realize that my spiritual and emotional journey is far from over and will continue for a great part of the remainder of my life long after the GCS which will also be performed along with my breast augmentation ( BA) by Dr. McGinn.
These procedures will not make me a woman…I already am a woman and have been one my whole life. I just received the wrong indoctrination by those who raised me as well as society based upon my physical appearance. I don’t blame anyone for the wrong indoctrination – they were doing what they believed was right Becoming a woman is not as simple as one day you are a male and then you wake up and you are female. I will finally have the body physically that will correspond with my true essence. However, the surgical procedures to be performed by my surgeon will not simply make me a woman. I have always been one but the journey will go on long afterward for me to relearn all that I did not learn in my previous life inside the shell and a journey to grow as a woman and a person! The surgery will assist society in recognizing me as a woman since it is stuck in its binary thinking so documents such as birth certificate, driver’s license and many others will now reflect me as a woman. These procedures merely correct, along with my previous FFS in January the incorrect body parts and put my body in tune with my spirit.
In this week’s blog I will discuss my early years of life, which for me, was one of discovery, feeling alone and living in fear of this deeply held secret I carried inside of me. Next week I will discuss the middle years of my life in my denial, repression, anger and refinement of the shell that hid my true essence of my soul. Needless to say, that will not be a pretty one but I would not be where I am today without that dark period. I will take a week off the following week to discuss my travels to Washington D.C. with Paula and my friends to lobby for our rights and dignity as transgendered people as part of the NCTE’s Transgendered Lobby Days. However, I will then discuss the more recent periods of my life in the subsequent blog where I evolved from the shell and finally emerged to live my life fulltime as Melissa – my true essence. The last few days before I depart for my surgery I will give my final thoughts as the big day in my life approaches which will change my body radically to what it should have always been in my life as well as discuss and give thanks to many wonderful people who helped me in my journey and who have helped me reach this point in my life.
I was born in 1960 and I grew up in a house my parents moved to when my mother was three months from bringing me into this world. Mom always wanted a girl. Especially after my older brother’s birth I was told that my mother prayed everyday for God to grant her wish to have a little girl she had desired so much in her life. Maybe my soul and brain received the messages and prayers but my genetic code obviously did not and I was born and classified in our binary system of thinking of society as “male”. As far back as I can remember I never fully felt that my body fit my image of how I saw myself and felt I was a girl. I recall an episode when I was about age 6 or 7 years old when I received the wonderful but only occasional delight of getting to play dolls with the neighbor girls. I loved those times so dearly and my father would have died if he knew what I was doing. One afternoon, I found myself alone in the basement of my neighbor Diane who let me occasionally play dolls and house with her. Her clothes were sitting folded on the dryer and it was not long before this uncontrollable urge to remove my boy clothes and to put her’s on instead overcame me. I stood there trembling in her clothes and clutching one of her dolls and while the feelings of guilt and shame overcame me for those few brief moments I had a clarity of who I truly was but did not understand why I was like that at all.
The episodes repeated themselves again and again. I felt so ashamed and so full of fear, anguish and guilt. I hid the feelings very tightly. There was a kid in my school who was picked on mercifully because he was gay but I lacked the courage to stand up and defnd him for fear of having the scorn turned on me.The indoctrination as a male worked against my inner feelings but still I knew I was “different”. Since I knew nothing of this and knew no one else who talked about anything like this I feared I was so alone! Why was I like this? Did I do something wrong? When opportunities were no longer available from my classmates and neighbors I sought out to emulate my mother by dressing in her clothes – a process which occurred at least a few times a month –pretty much from the time I was about eleven or so until late in my high school years. I was so sacred I would be caught but I could not stop myself from doing this ritual over and over. I dearly loved expressing my femininity and often wondered what girls my age would be doing in their lives. I still lived in shame and fear and still felt I must be alone or one of the few who were afflicted by these feelings. My parents continued to raise me as their “son” and not their daughter. As the years went on, more and more indoctrination occurred against my true soul and essence.
It only caused me more guilt and shame but as hard as I fought to fight off the feelings that kept pouring out. When I was twelve I discovered the terms cross dresser, transvestite and transsexual from a psychology book I found in our library. When I was 13 I dressed from head to toe as a girl with all the accessories and I discovered my name was Melissa ( It just sort of came to me as I looked at myself in the mirror that afternoon as I stood before it and seeing a reflection that seemed so right.) When I was fourteen I almost told my parents who sensed something was eating at me but I could not find the right words to express what I felt or even how to begin and I thought they would not love me anymore when I told them. So I lied to them. I made up another story of what was bothering me .The lies came so easy and freely and soon my life would be filled with them…..the early years of my life gave way to a period of denial, lies and deceit to myself and others as well as emersion into typical “masculine” things that I believed would rid me of these feelings that I was a girl. The lies and denials and deep repression of Melissa would leave me imbedded in a tightly wound shell that would take decades to erode…………...

Make a Smilebox slideshow

One More Time...........with feeling!

When I was a child I remember my father explaining to me that men were not suppose to cry or show their emotions and always were to keep their feelings pretty much to themselves. Of course, since I was raised as a male due to my genetic defects, this seemed contrary to my way of thinking. I always was a sensitive child but as I got in college and my early years in my career, I was a tightly wound individual and deeply repressive of my true self and I learned to not show much emotion beyond anger. This really was a not a really good one to display. However, there were times that, despite my best efforts, I felt my true emotions of who I really was and my feelings and the warmth that they brought shined through the ugly shell. I would have to look away so others could not see I was crying or feeling emotional so I could keep up the “rough exterior façade”. Sometimes I might read a story or see a movie or show on TV which was emotional powerful and I would find tears streaming down my face. Since that did not fit my “image” I was desperately trying to portray I always hoped these episodes occurred when no one was around to see them.
The words spoken to me by the indoctrination of my father always rung out in my head….. “Men don’t show their emotions and they don’t cry”. Even my father lost sight of his own directives at the end of his life as he displayed many more emotions. I still remember shortly before his death in the nursing home we held each other and told each other how much we loved each other. Tears streamed own our faces as we did. Just prior to that I had to tell him my brother and his son had been killed in an accident and we cried for hours together and the night mom died shortly before that, I saw a man in a wheelchair broken down with tears streaming down his tired face. I buried each of them and wrote their eulogies in succession. I cried as I delivered each one. However, I also decided that feeling emotions and displaying them freely should not have to wait until deathbeds and funerals!
My decision to stop lying to myself and everyone else and to live life as Melissa- my true essence of being and to rid myself of the ugly shell and façade was made not only made so I could stop living a lie and find peace as a woman trapped in a male shell, but also with the understanding that I would be able to feel and express emotions as woman. Emotions and feelings can be a scary item but only if you try to hide them or fight them or repress them instead of embracing them! Even before I began living fulltime as Melissa this began to occur as I let my true self be seen and feel. The ingestion of estrogen into my body during my transition has only heightened the feelings that were already there but repressed from years of living in a shell and pretending and living by my father’s directives. I love the emotions and I love feeling alive. I cry at almost anything (it could be a poem, an article about a child dying of cancer, a TV show, a commercial or even a hymn I hear in church on Sunday) and I simply don’t care who sees me express the emotions anymore. I look at pictures of my children on my desk of my office and I simply break down and cry. When I think of how much I love and care for Paula and how much she loves me I cannot hold back the tears of joy of finding a soul mate in life as Melissa. The tears flow like a river but the river leads to my soul and they cleanse my heart.
I feel so deeply and passionately and the emotions roll over me like a wave does for one who stands in the ocean. Each successive wave brings more feeling and warmth and depth of emotion I always knew was there. I can feel again completely and I express my emotions like any other woman does with both tears of joy as well as sadness! I love to cry and I do my fair share of it for sure! The feelings take root inside of me and seem to connect pathways that were always there but forgotten. I love the feelings …I love the passion…I love the emotion and depth of feeling…let the tears flow freely whenever and wherever they may need to flow. No longer does my father’s adage apply as if it ever really did anyway. Maybe it is suppose to applicable to men today although I really think most men could use more good cries and many more feelings and emotions than they normally display. However, as Melissa- my true essence, it has no meaning at all. Let the waves of emotions and feelings swarm over my body and soul and renew me as a woman. God does it ever feel so good!

Fresh Starts, much thanks and good freinds

Fresh starts are sometimes necessary in one’s life and this is particularly true for the life of as transgendered person. Last summer after coming out to the world about who I truly was as a person I had to pick up the pieces of a failed marriage and loss of contact with my children and disassociation from many of my old friends and find a new place to live. I still had not gone through my name change yet and I needed a place on an interim level to carry me through living fulltime in my true essence. Fortunately, I had made contact with a sister in our community- Jenny who offered her place for that purpose and I moved there and began my life as Melissa in earnest. During this time, my love Paula moved down to be with me as she started her journey. Both of us went through some rough times with divorces and such but we moved on leaving behind bitterness and anguish to come through the other side. During this interim period we also each changed our name to reflect our true essence of who we are and have always been in our lives. We celebrated Christmas together and I recovered from my facial surgery. Jenny was gone all but a few days a month during the months Paula and I lived there because of her job and her surgery and we kept things going for her and took care of her home. We loved her animals and we cared for and tended to their needs as well. The arrangement helped her by having some people to keep an eye on her things while she attended to her work and surgeries out of the area and in the sharing of expenses on her place.
However, it was not our place and we knew that we could not stay there much longer as Jenny was on a different path in her life. She is gone all but a handful of days each month due to the demands of her work to another part of the country and she may, if things fall into place for her on her blossoming career, need to move there permanently. Paula and I also look forward to our impending surgeries so that our bodies will finally fit who we have always been on the inside. The surgeries are of great joy and welcomed anticipation to us- but as anyone knows who has been through this procedure or any other complex surgery, one’s strength is greatly diminished and the physical restrictions placed upon us by our surgeon would have precluded us from moving until well into the fall for sure and even then we would have needed even more help than we did this past weekend to accomplish the task.
Paula and I needed to find our own place and get settled into it before my surgery in May and Paula’s surgery in July. Practicalities of what this would involve for us physically left us with the need to find our own space and finish the move before any of these crucial events occurred. We found a place in Columbus itself which was closer to the activities we were involved with in our life. We knew it will be a difficult task to move. Despite divorces which left us with much less possessions than we had in our past, we had accumulated enough and moving would be no easy task. Fortunately, just like Jenny did when she opened her doors to us to settle after the dust storm had begun in our old worlds; we again found the warmth and support of many wonderful friends in our community. Our good friend Joann came from West Virginia for the weekend to help us. Our wonderful sisters Karen and Marilyn came over to help and God only knows we would never have made it without the “bulk” of strength provided by our male counterparts in this community: Braden, Shane and Kayden. It is amazing the strength these fine young men now all have after transitioning to live life as who they are as people. As we weak as Paula and I have grown with our process in the opposite direction, these young men have so much vigor and strength from theirs for sure. They are true gentleman in every sense of the word! We sincerely appreciate all the help we received in this move. We simply could not have done it without their help. Paula and I spent a few more days unpacking and putting some finishing touches on our new place. We still have more things to do but it is quickly shaping up to be our place where we can continue our life together and work our way through the final stages our transitions and into a our new lives being who we truly are as people.
We thank Jenny for opening her doors to us at the early stages of our life together and living as our true selves -Paula and Melissa and we wish her well in her path and journey. Our place here in Columbus will always be open and welcoming for any friend, sister or brother of our community. We are thankful for all our friends and all that they have done in helping us along on our paths in this journey. A new chapter of our life began this weekend as we started life in our new place together. It is a fresh start for us and we are thankful for all that helped make it happen!

Pictured above is Paula and I in our new place taken by Joann before we went to church on Sunday.