A slight detour to the spiritual side – the good, the bad, and the ghostly.

When I was young, I used to see spirit people in my bedroom. This started when I was still in my crib – I remember it clearly. There was a woman with a babushka who caught my attention in the window, and said “I just want you to know that everything’s going to be all right.” I closed the curtain on her, and then heard a knock at the window.   When I was a little older, I moved into a small L-shaped room, with two doors and two windows facing Lake Erie. I had to go to bed at 8:00 pm. I always wanted someone to stay up, so that I would fall asleep before they went to bed. After everyone was asleep, the “fun” would start. I would see spirits all night. It seemed there was some kind of spiritual highway going from the wall, right past my bed and through me, to the door.  (Now I know those highways are called ley lines.) I would always see a tall man that was not so nice, who wore a hat, and always tried to strangle me.

The fear would take my breath away anytime one of these events happened.  I hid under the covers for most of my childhood nighttime life. I had a short attention span in school; all I really wanted to do during the day was sleep. And at night stay up because I was afraid that they would attack me in my sleep.

Once I was old enough to talk, I would explain what happened to my mother, and she would say “You need to stop watching scary movies with your father.”  He loved Bela Lugosi and Vincent Price, and always wanted me to watch those movies with him, but I saw terrifying stuff every night and didn’t need to see the movies (or hear the creepy music as a soundtrack).  Years later a cousin stayed in my room and ended up sleeping on the couch, terrified because he felt he was being strangled.

Although my family was Catholic, for years my Mom and Dad took me to Lily Dale, NY in the summertime.  Lily Dale is very unusual – it’s a town of psychics where visitors can get a reading from a large community of mediums.  I would make fun of it though I secretly loved it. My mom always got a free reading at the healing stump, where a crowd would gather with psychics who would pick people out and tell them about their passed-over loved ones. My dad was not so much into it. You have to be open to that sort of stuff.

I always felt Lily Dale was my home even though I mocked it. I didn’t want anyone to know how comfortable I was there – for once I didn’t feel judged. Sometimes my mother would take me by myself because I think she felt the same comfort.  Once she got a reading from a medium who started speaking in Spanish while channeling a relative from Puerto Rico, even though the psychic wasn’t fluent. My mother was so moved, she cried.  We went every summer and my mom brought a lot of friends with her.  They were all afraid during the healing stump readings and would close their arms and legs so the psychics wouldn’t be able to read them.  I was always hoping to get a reading but never did until I was an adult.

When I was 13, I met a medium there from Canada who recommended that I say a prayer every day – years later I found out my mother liked the prayer enough to copy that prayer in her bible.  It’s called the Prayer of Protection, and when I started going to a Unity Church many years later, I found it is a major prayer in that faith.  I say it with my son every night that I am with him.

“The Light of God surrounds you,

The Love of God enfolds you,

The Power of God protects you,

The Presence of God watches over you.

Wherever you are, God is, and all is well.”

Puberty sucks but even more when you're transgender

My menses started when I was eleven. I remember the day. I was in band and was wearing a very stylish-at-the-time light blue suit with embroidery on the back. When I went into the girls’ room with bad cramps, I thought I had a stomach bug but quickly realized what was happening.  I felt embarrassed, ashamed, scared and vulnerable. It was a validation that I was indeed a woman and I was doomed for life in a woman’s body. The idea that I could now have kids was disgusting to me. 

I never wore that fashionable suit again, because I couldn’t get the bloodstains out.

When I came home I told my mom, thinking she would be supportive. She instead got on the phone and called people – family members, her friends -- and told them. I was so embarrassed and ashamed that everybody knew.  Why did God do this to me? I cried a lot that day. In fact, that was the first day I thought about suicide.  I told my mother I was going to take a walk.  There were some three-foot high metal pillars along the road, and I climbed up on one like a pedestal and prayed.  I prayed a lot as a kid. I saw that I could almost reach some power lines from my high spot.  I tried to jump up and grab an electrical line. At that moment, a friend walked up to me and asked what I was doing. I laughed and said I was just checking to see if they were all right. She remembers me laughing and kidding around. It was a great defense mechanism.

When I was 10 or so my brother and his friends used to wrestle with me and play sports. It seemed once I had my monthly thing, that all stopped. It was awful, and I couldn’t share how I felt with anyone because nobody understood how I felt.  It was the 1960s -- a girl feeling like she was really a boy, not just a tomboy, was not anything anyone had ever heard of or talked about in my world.  As long as I could remember, I wished I was a boy. My sisters and my mom would dress me in fancy dresses and socks with ruffles. If you look at baby pictures of me you can see the tear in my eyes wanting to come out.  I can now recognize that haunted expression in pre-transition transgender people. Chastity Bono was one of them – I used to say to my grandmother “That girl looks sad,” when we watched Sonny and Cher.  Later I would watch Chastity transform into Chaz, with profound results.

I did not know about dysphoria when I was in puberty. As a reminder, it is the opposite of euphoria – a state of extreme depression and anxiety.   I felt it quite often when I did not want to feel the woman thing, the dress thing, any woman-associated thing that I had to do. I developed breasts very early, at age 9. So I would use tape or wear a bathing suit to hide my top half, and I hunched my shoulders.  Nowadays, young teenagers who are transgender can use hormone blockers to prevent the shock of your body turning into someone who is definitely not you.

The statistics for suicide attempts among transgenders is startling, at about 40%. They are also at more risk for violence, particularly male-to-female trans women, and even more so, trans women of color.  On November 22^nd, both internationally and nationally, people will observe the Transgender Day of Remembrance for those lost to violence and hate crimes.

I am very happy now and would not have been able to write so freely about this before. Even now it is very hard for me to feel these emotions. It is like opening up wounds and pouring salt into them each time. I am not telling my story to gain pity, but to help others on their path who are like me, and for their loved ones to understand. I felt like I was only half a person for many years and I can honestly say I am whole now.

Childhood, and the saving power of percussion

My childhood was interesting, to say the least. My father was Polish and my mother Puerto Rican. There was a cultural and language gap at times, since my mother's English was imperfect.   I was called Puerto-Pole by a dear friend in middle school and I loved it, probably because it had no gender attached to it.

My married sister had a son when I was eight years old. I loved that kid and still do. I could be the boy through him. I used to play ships with him, climb in boats and play a lot of traditionally boy-role games.  It felt so normal to play that way, compared to how girls wanted to play. I had no interest in their tea parties and dolls.

People who now know me through spiritual circles will not be surprised to hear that I played priest when I was five. I wore my dad's black trench coat backwards, cut up pieces of Wonder Bread with a shot glass to be the host, used grape juice for wine and the piano bench for my altar. My sisters and brother were regular congregants.

My dad had very little patience, but he understood me and seemed to know I wasn't a regular girl. I used to hang out with him wearing a t-shirt and eat raw clams, or play football. He played professional jazz sax and I played drums with him occasionally, starting when I was 11 and up through adulthood.

I started playing drums in elementary school. Since I was a tomboy that always felt like a real boy, my drums were my savior -- I could escape in the music.  I noticed that gender played a large role in the percussion section. I personally never thought drums preferred certain genders to play them, until I saw the girls in band always getting assigned the bell and triangle parts, and the boys getting the bass drum and snare. I thought that it was unfair that everything seemed to have gender written all over it.  As I grew older and went into middle that prejudice faded, and everyone got a chance to rotate amongst all the percussion instruments.  It's a shame we were taught so young that girls were only able to play the lesser-valued instruments (like the triangle) and the boys got the powerful ones.  (Note: "The Pink Panther" has a great triangle part, which I played. But I digress.)  High school brought on the gender disparity even more strongly than it had been in elementary school, which was a great source of frustration. I wasn't allowed to play the drum set until 11th grade simply because I was a girl.  It was never stated out loud, but everyone knew that girls didn't get to play the cool drum parts.

In elementary school every girl had to wear a dress playing in the band. When I got to middle school that rule was in place there too.  I was in stage jazz band in 8th grade. Mr O., my conductor, must have known me well because he said "Now Nancy, you do not have to wear a dress playing the drums. A nice leisure suit or dark slacks are fine."  My mother did not believe me. So I was forced to wear a skirt playing drum set, which means that the audience all saw my underwear.  Mr O. was very polite and told my mom in person that I did not have to wear a skirt any more. I was so embarrassed, and experienced what I now know as dysphoria: the opposite of "euphoria," it's a profound depression that for me was a disconnection from my body as a protection so that I could not feel.  I would get to know that feeling very intimately as I reached puberty.

It's very interesting to be male-female and see both sides looking back at my childhood, because I got to understand the difficulties and emotions a female goes through and how it formed me as a male.

First reflection - TransNami post

Hello my name is Nami, and I am a transgender. I've been wanting to do a blog for a long time. My goal is to help others understand the transgender journey. What it boils down to is this: It's so important to be true to yourself. If you're not true to yourself, then you're not really living. It only took me 51 years to figure that out.  I want to set a good example for my 9-year old son and leave with him a legacy of truth.

My name was Nancy Anne up until three years ago.  I always thought of myself as a boy, or a man. What was on the inside did not always match with what my reflection showed in the mirror. 

It all started when I was 2 years old. I was jumping on my parents' bed, and in my mother's dresser mirror, I saw a girl jumping on the bed. Who was this girl I saw?  It didn't look like me at all. Was I dreaming -- more like a nightmare -- or was it really who I was?  So I jumped off the bed and, hardly able to reach my mom's pin box, on my tiptoes I grabbed a hat pin and poked my eye with it. "Ouch!" I said and realized I was not dreaming.  That little girl was ME. Hearing me, my mother got off her phone call quickly and ran into the room. "Oh my God!" she said in her Puerto Rican accent, "Nancy are jew crazy?!"  I said "I thought I was a boy!" She said "No, I am bery sorry you are not a boy. You are a girl and that is how it is."

I was confused and heartbroken, as though I had entered a nightmare and could not wake up. I decided when I was 5 years old that my hair needed to be short and that I should wear boys' clothes. Thank God I had an older brother who had clothes that were too small for him. When I was around 7 or 8, he caught me trying on his jock strap and underwear and admiring the look in his mirror.  I feel it was more embarrassing for him than it was for me.  Honestly it felt quite normal wearing a boy's underclothes.

Not everybody in my family understood my point of view, but my grandfather on my Dad's side  always let me play dress up with his clothes. His name was John. He would make windsor knots on his old ties and let me try them on.  I loved playing dress up with his stuff.  I felt he accepted me and knew somehow that I was really a boy.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. More to come...