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Emma Sweet's Blog

A blog by Emma in General

  • Entries

    98

  • Comments

    349

  • Views

    64,226

About this blog

Exploration and growing into my transgender self

Entries in this blog

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

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

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

Emma's Progress Report, November 2014

I have experienced so much in the last month, coming closer to myself, coming out to my wife, participating in TG Guide. Maybe it will help me (and others, I hope) to review and express my gratitude for my progress. Here’s some of what I’ve learned: My fantasy outcomes are just that, fantasies. The fantasies I’m talking about are the ones having to do with my wife’s unconditional acceptance of me, dressing how I wish, being fully open to my awakening, even cuddling together. It saddens me
  • Emma

"Serenity Now!"

Remember the Seinfeld episode when Jerry's father kept yelling "Serenity now!" when he was upset and about to lose it? Very funny show. I'm not very religious and don't attend church.. I was raised Episcopalian, attended a church school for 6th and 7th grades, and my parents often had us recite the Serenity Prayer or the Lords Prayer before dinner. I think the prayer was for my benefit... I remember how earnestly I repeated the words in the Serenity Prayer, hoping that my emphasis would ga
  • Emma

On Trust

I'm not sure if this is a good idea to post. I don't like writing this because it's such a problem for me, it's a downer. But hey, maybe that's why they call it a "blog" so here goes. My wife was very upset at our last couples' therapy meeting, where I spelled out more details of my being transgender and asked for her support and offered some safe (to my mind) ways for us to explore and learn together. My hope was that she'd follow her heart and maybe through this exploration she'd gain knowl
  • Emma

Dear Sugar

Have you heard of Cheryl Strayed, who has a column called "Dear Sugar?" If not, I suggest you find out about her. Check out her book "Tiny Beautiful Things." In hindsight I wish I'd included it in my Suggested Reading post. Below is a letter to her and her response. (I didn't really send it, but it's in tune with others in her book.) I'll also add that I wrote this about a year ago. I'm posting it now to reinforce my positive feelings in myself and, I hope it might help others. Dear Sugar
  • Emma

Definition(s) of "Transition"

According to Google, the definition of transition is: "the process or period of changing from one state or condition to another." In the context of transgender, my sense is that it means moving toward a more final condition of living full time, HRT, and quite possibly, surgery. If you don't mind, I'd like to put a finer point on it and hear some feedback. In my career in high-tech marketing/sales we often used the phrase "we don't know what we don't know" to underscore our lack of understand
  • 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

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

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

Living the Dash

I found this poem in my father's papers a few years ago after he passed away. And I found it again yesterday as I was (finally!) going through everything, trying to tidy things up. The poem really touches my heart and I think it's perfect for us here. Living the Dash I read of a man who stood to speak At the funeral of a friend. He referred to the dates on her tombstone From the beginning... to the end. He noted that first came her date of birth
  • Emma

An Important Documentary: "Just Gender"

"JUST GENDER tackles the all too often misunderstood world of transgender. The film explores the common myths and misunderstandings about transgendered people, as well as the confusion between sexual orientation and gender identity as reflected in the rigid binary view of the world generally held by society. JUST GENDER also touches on the discrimination, hardships and brutality resulting from those misconceptions and prejudices, including the numerous deaths caused by hate each year. Through th
  • Emma

My Fever's Broken

It may be too soon to be sure but at least it feels that way. For the last 50 years I feel like I’ve had a fever that ranged from slightly above normal to scarlet, along with raging shame, depression, and self-loathing. I can’t fully express how weird it is to be writing this now with my head clear. I’m transgender, I know it, I love it, and I’m happy. (Postscript edit: I heard from Monica that she thought I was actually recovering from a fever. No, I thought it was a handy metaphor for th
  • Emma

Dressing in Layers

My wife’s been out house-sitting for a couple of weeks, and will do so for another two weeks, so that’s provided me some space to explore myself. Most mornings I walk a couple of blocks to our local coffee shop before breakfast, buy a large cup, and return home to catch up on emails while enjoying the coffee. Now, though, I can add something feminine to my clothing which I like to do. But I must not present anything girly on the outside. I know many of the people I run into and as we know, m
  • 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

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

Going Public

Yesterday morning when I first saw mention of Businessweek's publication "Tim Cook Speaks Up," I thought it was a bit anticlimactic. Most knew that he is gay. After all, he'd led Apple's contingent at the LGBTQ Pride Parade this year and even before that the word was pretty much out. But I was deeply moved by his words and the article. Not only was he stepping out as the CEO of the Fortune 1 company (as one writer described it today in the NYT). He was inclusive of all LGBTQ people. It's n
  • 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

Depression and Suicide

Two months after I graduated from college my mother committed suicide. In the middle of the night she'd driven off of a cliff south of Santa Cruz into the rocks and surf below. In many ways I was relieved but felt guilty for that. I felt I was supposed to cry and look bereaved so I did my best at her funeral and it seemed that everyone accepted my act. As I was growing up she was often depressed, sometimes unable to get out of bed. She was hospitalized several times, took antidepressants
  • Emma

Nom de Femme

When I wrote my first post yesterday I couldn't imagine what else I might write about. Since then my mind's been churning out ideas left and right that I hope people here will enjoy and/or find informative. We'll see. Today I'm writing about how I came up with my female name. The first name I chose for myself turned out to be my wife's middle name. I'll keep that one private for now in case I ever introduce her to this blog. Understandably, she's very apprehensive about posting things
  • Emma

Hello Friends

Hello everyone, Wow, this is both exciting and a bit intimidating. First and foremost it's so fun to see my "nom de femme" in such a distinguished forum. But now that it's there, what shall I write about? I suppose my first inclination was to write some sort of diary. Honestly, I'll bet that won't be that interesting. And too, I'm a little wary of overcommitting. Let me provide a short biopic and see what comes up. Let me know if you have questions or comments and we'll see if we estab
  • Emma

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