To be who I truly am ...

My favorite quote is from e. e. cummins, "It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are."

For a very long time I knew that who the world saw when they looked at my life was not who I truly was in my heart. And when I heard the e. e. cummins quote I was ashamed. Ashamed because I knew I didn't have the courage to be who I really am. But I clung to the quote and it has been in my .sig files for 15+ years.

Today ... today, some would say I've "turn(ed) out to be who I really am." But I have not finished my journey. Everyday is a struggle to be who I really am. Everyday I fight the desire, the siren call, the need to be who others want me to be. There is safety there. I don't have to be brave anymore. I don't have to stand in the fire. Yes, it calls to me!

But I cannot go back! "Back" was an unreality. And "Normal" is something that I can never reclaim without going into hiding. Where do I hide from my self? It is a lie that the pain I feel now will be gone. The specific pains? maybe, but there will be pain and hurt still and the shame that I turned my back on who I really am.

It catches me funny sometimes when I think about it, but I am -PROUD- of who I am!

A Hard Day

It was not a very good day.



Some relationship issues and then I had to withdraw the last of the IRA I've been living on and sell off the stock I had hoped to pay for my surgery with. Coming home from that, I contacted a friend who has been following my application for work. He said they'd hired everyone already and my application didn't get a look. Had a very long sad cry about that. I guess I didn't know just how much getting a job there had come t mean to me. Almost three years without work just because I told my supervisor I am a transsexual. They fired me for something else, of course, but it was because I came out.



I am hurting really bad. So many losses the last couple years! I didn't feel like it was an emotionally safe thing for me to do to go out tonight. So I stayed home and watched Harry Potter.

In Harm's Way

Today and this weekend is an anxious time for me.

I am going camping near Rainier with a Car Camping meetup group. For the first time. I am not out to them. And after the rejection of Wednesday, I am very hesitant to put my bruised heart on the line again. I have had three meltdowns this morning. Why do I have to put my heart on the line? Why can't this be easier? I deserve better than this treatment! Why can't people just let me be me?

ALL! All I EVER! wanted to be was the "Girl Next Door."

I like the nickname SweetShannon because of the alliteration. But mostly it is who I want to be. I want to be a sweet and gentle woman, perhaps a lady, that everyone is comfortable with and, hopefully, somewhat attached to.

And again, I am putting my heart on the line and I am scared. I don't do rejection well. And I do not want to go there or hide safely in my shell. But I cannot live without putting my heart in harm's way. And I pray Poppa is with me and keeps my heart safe if not unbruised.

I Just Want To Be Me!

It has been a disappointing and painful afternoon for me. I am .. was .. a member of a meetup group that was about dealing with empty nest syndrome. After I came out, separated and divorced, I have only my adopted daughter for family. It is a bittersweet thing to see her growing up and into her life. I am proud of her. So I sought out this group for support. I was not out to them. At least, not that I knew of.

At last weeks walk and talk, one of the women commented on my children that don't talk to me, "The children that you bore!?!?!" I responded, "uh, my flesh and blood." But I was immediately uneasy. Carrying and bearing a child is [or should be] a privilege and an honor to my way of thinking and I had not earned that honor. I haven't born any children. It seemed wrong to me to let her think so.

We came to a place where we could stop for a moment and I asked everyone to let me get something said. I came out to them. It seemed really good and ok the rest of the day. I got some good questions about my life and my process. I answered them as straightforward as I could. Everything seemed OK.

Today I got an email from one of the organizers asking me to not come back. I was making people upset. And she had already removed me from the group. It hurt .. hurts like when you've been dumped for no good reason just as you were beginning to like the guy. Hurts a lot.

I know, in my head, that it isn't really about me. For all their money and education, they don't know much of anything and even less, how to ask real questions about life.

Where I am really struggling is in my Pollyanna world I want to go where I want to go and be able to be me. If no one knows my history, fine. If someone asks about my history, I'll let them know. But if I am going to get rejection? do I out myself first and change all assumptions about me? or do I go stealth and take the chance after I fall in love with the people, the event, the whatever, I would get rejected like some poor relation discovered with a bad birth defect?

I just want to be me! I've paid a price to be who I want to be in this society. I paid my taxes, I voted, I raised my kids to be people who take care of their own responsibilities, I served my country in the armed services. I deserve better than this!

A letter to my cousin ...

My Dad's side of the family has been having a reunion every 2 or 3 years since the middle eighties. This summer they are having another reunion. I have decided not to go. My cousin in California, more-or-less the Patriarch at this time, has been gently talking to me about coming to the reunion.

This is my response to him:

I have -never- doubted your love and support. And it pains me to not be there. My Poppa knows my heart, [1 Samuel 16:7] and He knows I am pretty much who I have always been. And He knows that I love Him and I love my Brother, the One Who Loves me. It pains me that I am not able to give my family the opportunity to see me and know me spirit to spirit. But now is not the time. My children are not able to see my heart right now. And there are others, and we both know who they are, who wont ever see my heart or know my spirit. The latter, I am just sad for. Sad because the god they worship fits in a box they have defined. And my God, my Poppa, is bigger than any box they can imagine.

My children, though, I have decided not to push whatsoever. And it is hard. They are not ready to open their hearts and see with their Spirit that I am still their Dad, the Dad they have always known. I miss them terribly. I am very lonely for them.

Again, though, Poppa has provided. Poppa brought a young woman into my life who had been disowned by her parents. We became friends, then good friends. I told her once that I thought of her as a daughter. Within the month she started calling me "Momma." It was light and tongue-in-cheek at first, but Poppa knew our hearts and our needs. She is the Daughter-of-My-Heart, my Daughter-In-Love. We have gone through a lot together. I have told B and J of her because, no longer needing to keep my true self secret, I really don't like keeping any secrets and the subject of my Daughter-In-Love felt like a secret. But my adopted daughter takes nothing away from B or J. And I am Dad to them as I am Mom to her. Sue and Jodi met her when they met me as Shannon the first time. Someday I would like for her to come to the reunion, too, but it is in Poppa's hands. Oh! in the original picture that I sent you, she is to my right.

Again, thank you for your love and support and understanding.

The dance

It's not a good night. Just plain, not a good night.


- Forgiveness is the scent the Rose leaves on the heel that crushes it

But Never A Mom

Mother’s Day 2011

Dedicated to Poppa and a special young woman….

For a long time I have wanted to be a woman. In all those years, with all that longing, I never considered being a mom. In the early years, I thought about being a wife to a husband. But never a mom. As I came to understand myself better and understood that a woman could be a partner to another woman, I thought about being a wife. But never a mom. At my age I have been reluctant to be involved with another woman with a child at home. I could not see myself as a mom to another woman’s child. When I began my transition, when I began to live a real life, full time, all the time, I had simple visions of what my life as a woman would be. But in my visions, I was never a mom.

Very shortly after coming out and beginning to live a life true to myself, Poppa introduced me to a young woman who had lost her parents. We became friends. We drank a lot of Tully’s. I would encourage her, be a sounding board, and when she needed advice, I gave her the best advice I could give.

We grew closer over time. I found myself thinking of her as a daughter. And I told her so. Soon she was calling me momma. It seemed a little bit of a joke between us but it became a real connection very quickly.

Sometimes I feel that it takes a lot of nerve on my part, a lot of presumption, for me to claim to be a mom -- I am a woman untimely born. I did not think of being a mother or a mom growing up like most girls. But I have found myself loving this young woman as a daughter and parenting her as best I know how. If my spirit is in fact a woman’s spirit and I have been a parent to her, then I guess maybe I am a mom.

Poppa has given me with this young woman to love, to be the daughter of my heart. Only by His Grace am I a woman. And by His Grace, forever a mom.