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Emma Sweet's Blog

A blog by Emma in General

  • Entries

    98

  • Comments

    349

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    63,757

About this blog

Exploration and growing into my transgender self

Entries in this blog

Wow

I joined TG Guide almost four years ago. The time seems short and in hindsight it's passed quickly but there were many deep valleys amid the peaks. Last weekend I hiked to Tolmie Peak with some lesbian friends. Imagine that, out and about as natural as can be.  Now making plans for GCS, hopefully by end of Q1 2019. And yesterday my ex-wife phoned to ask if I'd like for her to help me through recovery! (You bet, I answered.)  Wow.
  • Emma

What's My Label?

I want to know what my label is which I suppose can be interpreted to knowing my own identity. Perhaps that sounds strange to some. After all, I don't think anyone wants to be labeled by others. We (or at least, me) want to know what we are ourselves. What does it matter? I think it's so that as we progress through the day, interact with others, we know who we are in the world. And yes, I'm talking here about gender. For many, it's binary: male or female. We've all heard it before so why wr
  • Emma

What Is It...

About lying in bed, in my long white nightgown, reading, with my legs tucked under the skirt. It's like being at peace with the world, comfortable and cozy, and right. It just feels right. And that's what they say transgender is. What feels right, what does it for you. It's terribly hard at times to really put ones finger on it and like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, as soon as you try, it moves, as if it can't be objectively pinned down. Isn't it weird that something as simple as this co
  • Emma

What is Ambivalence Telling Me?

When I wrote my blog post about the "breaking of my fever" I asked myself if I was only experiencing the rush of gender euphoria. You know, that feeling of infatuation for a new love where you're so enthralled with finding the perfect soul mate... and you've only known them for a week or two. So, if my enthusiasm has waned even a bit, does this mean my journey is starting in the wrong direction? There are plenty of times when I reflect: Am I merely finding joy in exploring a childhood fantas
  • Emma

Walking Back from Lake Washington

People in Seattle take advantage of sunny/rain-free days and I'm no exception. I love walking from my house through a local park and then along Lake Washington for several miles. It's very large, with a total shoreline that's probably around 60-70 miles and of course I come no where near that. It's ringed with parks and walking/running paths and just lovely. Today I was talking with my wife (via phone) while walking. She's in California and has never seen me presenting authentically. She asked i
  • Emma

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Last week I had a disturbing experience at the therapist-led Transgender support group meeting I attend each month. It left me sad and disillusioned, and depressed. Today, five days later, I'm feeling better so that's good. I've thought about writing this in my blog but I've been very torn. I don't like to hear myself complain or whine and I don't know what the point of this post is anyway. Maybe we'll learn together. Prior to the support group meeting things were looking brighter. My wife ha
  • Emma

Trying It All On For Size

The last couple of weeks have been busy. I had a first meeting with a new gender therapist (Shannon), my eyebrows waxed by a stylist (Zed),  and an evaluation with a very experienced voice coach (Sandy). I’ve also started drafting my transition plan that I’ll review with Shannon when we meet again in September – after I return from Alaska.   I mentioned to Sandy (the voice coach) that I want to start low-dose HRT in September as a way to dip my toe in the water. She advised that I get some docto
  • Emma

Transgender Before Puberty

The documentary Just Gender has a short clip from a Barbara Walters 20/20 episode titled "My Secret Self: A Story of Transgender Children." You can (and I believe should) watch it here: One scene shows an 11-year old transgirl, Riley, with Barbara Walters. Riley is fully a girl on the outside and attends school as a girl although she must use the nurse's restroom. The school and students know she is biologically male and she is the brunt of childish teasing. When Barbara asks her how she
  • Emma

Topics for Wednesday

My next one-on-one appointment with my therapist is this coming Wednesday afternoon. During the week before I consider what we might talk about even though it often seems that we end up talking about something completely different. I suppose I want to be sure that I’m able to take advantage of the time and money spent. I want to extract every last bit of help that I can get. I keep a tally in my iPhone of thoughts and ideas. Here’s the current running list: I remember being so sad and terrifi
  • Emma

Ticket to Ride on the TG Train

I've been away for a while, my trans feelings kind of minimized, as if maybe I'd gotten over it. After all, maybe it was more about hiding, lying, and finally, now that the lying and hiding and shame are mostly over, and my wife and I started deeply loving each other again, the storm had passed. Or maybe it was like Judy my gender therapist said, the TG Train has many stations along its journey, and maybe I only needed a ticket to the first or second station? But lately as the weather has gotten
  • Emma

This Transwoman's House of Cards

It’s become clear to me recently that being transgender has been like living in a carefully constructed and maintained house of cards. Designed to protect me from discovery of my secret, my house has many rooms and no windows. Rooms are labeled with names like “How I’m supposed to be with people at work,” and “How I’m supposed to be with my wife,” and “How I’m supposed to be with friends.” Like any house of cards it’s prone to sudden collapse and needs continuous monitoring to detect any slippa
  • Emma

Therapist Meeting Minutes, 12/3/14

Had a meeting with my therapist this afternoon. It went fine - he's terrific. Need to continue to explore myself... Started by telling him that I’m feeling some sadness and ambivalence lately. The excitement of the gender euphoria has died down and I’m left with the enormity of wondering what to do, where I’ll end up, and how my life is going to be affected. I’ve read a lot about transgender and its definition. The first sentence in Wikipedia’s definition is: “Transgender is the state of
  • Emma

The Well of Loneliness

Now, I suppose the title of this post may sound like I'm having a bad time but no, just the opposite.  I came across these book covers recently - aren't they cool?  I just love them.  They bring up all kinds of thoughts and feelings for me. I'm going to look around eBay and elsewhere and see if I can get my hands on them.  (Postscript: It's on Amazon for $2 (Kindle version. Yay!) But really, my life is going pretty well recently.  I never thought I'd say this but the SSRI medication that the psy
  • Emma

The Martian

I'm about halfway through reading this book now and if you've ever enjoyed science fiction, well, this one is very unique and well done. It's about an astronaut who was left behind by the rest of the crew because they thought he was dead and lost. But he survives, alone on Mars, faced with many life-threatening problems that he must tackle on his own without any communication with anyone. I highly recommend it! While reading last night it occurred to me that I'm like a Martian myself. While
  • Emma

Teanaway Ridge Hike

I hiked up to Teanaway Ridge (https://www.wta.org/go-hiking/hikes/iron-bear) yesterday with Philippa, Juliette, and Clara. The weather, spring flowers, and amazing views of the Cascade Mountains were perfect, as was the after-hike beer and munchies. The hike was hard going for me since it was my first hike since my GCS/BA in late January. It was fun getting to know Clara and Juliette who are mid-30s, married to each other. Full of smiles and youthful energy and enthusiasm. The thing is that
  • Emma

Suggested Reading

One the high school classes I remember most fondly was entirely focused on reading. I took it as a senior because to get an A all one had to do was read at least 3,500 pages during the semester. I chose a book, the instructor okay'd it, I read it, reviewed it with her for about fifteen minutes, and voila! More pages added. No midterm, no final. Too cool for school. The class really changed my life as I learned how enjoyable it can be to read 500 to 1,000 page books. If you've been follo
  • Emma

Struggling with Labels

This morning I came across this wonderful post on Joanna Santos' blog: https://joannabefree.blogspot.com/2016/10/my-own-coming-out.html I know we don't typically reference sites off of TGG but I feel this is important. There, she posts a video that really resonated with me, that labels such as gay, male, white, transgender, etc., may set us up for "us vs. them" feelings, thus leading to isolation and our considering ourselves only within that label, which is only a part of our overall self. I've
  • Emma

Spontaneous Smiling Alert

Last Thursday as I was planning my day I knew that that evening I had an appointment with my therapist. I made plans to drop by an Amazon locker to pick up a new top and told some people that I was nervously thinking of putting it on in his restroom and surprising him in our meeting.  At lunch I read some encouragement from Veronica, Bree, and I think others, which just felt wonderful. After, as I walked to get a cup of coffee I suddenly realized I was smiling. I felt so wonderful to contemplate
  • Emma

Sometimes the Most Loving Thing To Say is "No"

This post has nothing to do with transgender so you can tune out if you wish; It's about my almost-27 year old son. Since he was five or six he's been very independent, stubborn, and willful, making lots of challenges for me and his mother (we're divorced). He's also bright, attractive, and has a wonderful personality... when he's not depressed and sour. A couple of days ago he told me that his mother is going to stop paying the rent on his cheap apartment. He wasn't asking me to pick it up
  • Emma

Small and Treasured

My wife recently asked me if I feel that I am female "inside."  If I am transgender, then doesn't that mean that I consider myself fundamentally female?  It turns out that those are questions I've asked myself and I am not confident I have the answers to.  After all, how can I ever know if you and I see the same color let alone if my thoughts and feelings are female?   To try to answer these questions I try to look at the facts that I do know and then draw a conclusion: I know that since prescho
  • Emma

R. A. I. N.

For Christmas my son gave me a copy of the book "Fully Present: The Science, Art, and Practice of Mindfullness." I had mixed emotions about it. On the one hand I've heard about the benefits of mindfullness meditation for several years and thought this might finally give me what I need to actually learn and add it to my life. On the other hand I've had so much trouble accepting mindfullness. (Isn't meditation a bunch of hocus pocus mumbo jumbo?) I worried that once again I'd fail to follow throu
  • Emma

Pushing Past the Terrifying Dip in Motivation

I've been feeling a little blue today. Like yesterday I'm questioning myself and have a lot of fearful thoughts in my head that are hard to fight. I subscribe to emails from Leo Babauta, who writes on his site Zen Habits. He's a neat guy, with a lot of good suggestions. Just now I saw this email from him, which I copied directly below. I hope/assume he'd be okay with my doing this since I'm attributing it all to him. He didn't write this with people dealing with TG issues like me in mi
  • Emma

Practicing Inner Kindness

I'm very drawn toward resources and ideas that I hope will help me practice and make automatic inner kindness. I need this as I have such a litany of self-directed put downs and labels that seem to come so automatically before I have a chance to prevent their affects. I've recently come across several that I hope I will find helpful and maybe you will too. I think of them like tools in my toolbox. But like any tools we need to use them enough so that they become familiar and automatic: In
  • Emma

Pablo Neruda

I receive a weekly email from Brain Pickings on Sunday mornings that often has inspirational vignettes. Today, they wrote, "Neruda relays an anecdote from his childhood that profoundly influenced not only his poetry but also his understanding of art and of life itself:" One time, investigating in the backyard of our house in Temuco the tiny objects and minuscule beings of my world, I came upon a hole in one of the boards of the fence. I looked through the hole and saw a landscape like that b
  • Emma

Onward!

It's a wonderful day, today. My wife is away this morning on business and while I miss her I have the opportunity to be myself for a couple of hours. After my shower I dressed with some feminine underthings (well concealed by layers of more masculine apparel) and headed out to our regular Sunday haunts, the coffee shop in Palo Alto, Trader Joe's, and the farmer's market, where I picked up long-stemmed tulips, a couple of heads of lettuce, some fresh asparagus, and cauliflower. Now, I'm at m
  • Emma

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