I’ve been a bit reticent to mention my recent trip to Hawaii in light of the global economic meltdown. No one wants to hear about frolicking in the tropical Pacific when the chips are down.
But it’s true–I just got back from Hawaii, where my family spent two weeks celebrating my parents 40th wedding anniversary. It [...]

I remember when Christmas was something to look forward to. Now, Christmas is the penultimate stage in December’s anxiety-inducing social gauntlet AND the litmus test for how well the family unit’s functioning under the weight of all the personalities in the family tugging at each other.
It feels more like 2008 is a conveyor belt I’ve [...]

I’m in the final stages of my coming out process. Last week, I emailed my PDF to a pile of ex-colleagues. There may be a few people who haven’t received it yet, but I’m pretty much done.
I got lots of great feedback from people, and that was really gratifying. It’s funny–being known as being trans [...]

I’ve been in Italy all week, staying at a really fabulous villa atop a Tuscan hillside. We’re here for the wedding of my friends D. and A.
Italy is great, just like it was the last time I was here. The food is nice. The buildings artfully terraced across the hilly landscape are breathtaking. Everything has [...]

There is way too much overhead in every situation in my life these days. Father’s Day is a prime example.
I assume that most fathers with young children are eagerly awaiting this Sunday’s consumerist celebration of dad-hood, but I’m having difficulty looking forward to it at all.
I’m irritated that Father’s Day has to be complex in [...]

My almost-ex-wife and I live suspended in our loss. We hung onto each other so tightly, and loved each other so urgently, that we managed to hold our marriage together through my entire crisis (eighteen months of craziness!).
Finally, the dust settled, and there I was: a trans woman waiting to go on hormones. She’s a [...]

For a while, my keenness for blogging disappeared. Life was far too complex and shitty. W. and I were desperately trying to hold our marriage together. Everything seemed too painful and too fraught to muse about in a public forum, even anonymously.
It had been so long since I had felt like posting, I had pretty [...]

Yesterday, I went to see my family doctor. As is my custom these days, I presented as a woman.
The truth is that I really don’t have a male presentation left anyway. I could assemble one if I wanted to–I’ve hung onto enough clothing, and I’m not on hormones or blockers yet–but I can’t bear the [...]

Various people, notably my wife, have been urging me to pick myself up off the mat. People have said it to me in different ways:

What about being trans in a Buddhist way?
You should be more than a gender–you’re a person
If you need to change your gender, then fine, but you’ve been a mess for over [...]