Sometimes it is the small things in life which tell us the most about who we are

One of my kids said upon arriving home last night after midnight—good ol’ trans daddy went to pick them up after a late night session in Milan which involved tying up a woman who had never been tied before, “I sure hope we have lot’s of visitors this summer.”

“But we do have visitors.  Already.  They are upstairs sleeping.”  It was really late.  I was exhausted.  But the comment made me think about FOMO (fear of missing out) or not seeing what you have for the richness that it represents.

I feel physically weak at the moment.  After a bout of food poisoning, something which never happens to me, I have continued to feel a bit out of sorts.  I think there is an imbalance in my biome.  I normally drink homemade kombucha every day, but I have been gone so long from my home and my brewing process, that there is none ready.  I have to say that the stuff you buy is almost never as good as the stuff I make, which is divine.

One of the things that is changing in me is my commitment to my body.  As a trans woman who transitioned late in life, but who is blessed with a lovely body, I am feeling compelled and motivated to care for it in ways that I could have never dreamed of.  First is alcohol.  I was never a heavy drinker, and I won’t be a non-drinker, but I essentially stopped drinking in January and had only one drink between then and June.  On the few times I have had a drink, I can feel it, and I am not sure that I like the feeling.

On the one hand, this could just mean a flight to quality—as in, I won’t bother drinking unless it is really good.  But something else.  I have never liked beer before.  Not ever.  And here I am with occasional cravings for beer.  Especially Guinness.  There must be something in it that my body wants.  A cursory glance says vitamin B.  Interestingly, this is a substance that I have never been able to get enough of in my diet.

I have a lady complaint.   A UTI, urinary tract infection.  Trans women are more likely to get them than cis women, because the vaginal pH of a trans woman is not as acidic as that of a natal woman.  I am told that the particular operation I had, using tissue from the abdomen, the peritoneal flap, is apparently much more like a cis vagina, and that this will play out over time.  Unfortunately, there are no studies.  The tyranny of medical research and its institutional skew towards white men is profound…and already this sucks for women everywhere, but trans women, forget it.

I know that there are women who put yoghurt in their vaginas.  I am perplexed by how an oral pill that is containing pro-biotics is going to seed my vagina.  After all, anything coming through the GI tract (gastro-intestinal) is going to be contaminated with e. coli and other yummies. My surgeon was horrified by these ideas. And why is it that boys are never taught to wipe properly? Front to back?

What’s happening?  Well, I have to pee all the time.  It burns when I do.  And my kidneys hurt.  I really need to be on antibiotics, but I have waited as long as I could to see if my body could fight it off, as taking antibiotics should be a last resort.  I will start on a course today.

When I said I would embrace being a woman to the Goddess during my Ayahuasca trip (now that I know her better, I think it was Kali), I said I would take the good with the bad.  All of it.  Rape.  Discrimination.  I hadn’t really thought about this.  It is very unpleasant.  And when I speak to the pharmacist, it is a bit hushed, as though a woman becomes unclean when she has a UTI.  

But mainly I have a low-grade fever, feel as if someone has beaten me up, and my guts are in a terrible knot.  And I think, yes, this is what a period would feel like to me.  So, it is curiously affirming.  And lord knows, we cannot have enough affirmation.

Where am I going with all of this?  Well, what I have learned in my new female body, and through two years of hormones, this new instrument of mine is much more sensitive.  By sensitive, I mean in picking up environmental cues.  My sense of smell is much stronger—a gift of oestrogen.  I feel energy much more directly and clearly.  It’s a bit like a gyroscope, all these sensitive moving parts, needing to be kept under a cloche like some delicate and ancient clock movement.  In other words, to be listened to, and taken care of.

My houseguests are a young couple.  He is a scientist; she is a spiritualist.  I am not speaking literally.  They wanted to know what it meant the phrase, “I am a witch”.  It needed explaining for ears that are sceptical of the occult, of anything which cannot be understood by rational process, but also for someone seeking to incorporate it into their life.

Being a witch is about being sensitive.  Being in tune with what is around us.  Seeing signs and symbols as they present themselves.  Omens.  And about working with less and less effort.  Letting things flow, but more importantly, understanding how they will flow and going with it.  Being supple. This is also a big part of being trans.

It is also how I approach Reiki as a practitioner.  Or how I approach somatic therapy as a practitioner.  It is also how I practice my witchcraft, and how I live my life.

I’ve been in England a lot lately.  One of the things that I have always loved about my homeland is the sensible and pragmatic attitude that most people have about getting along.  It always felt like a true democracy, and one whose virtues I extolled.  Of course, the recent landslide election in favour of the Labour party is a vote against the bigoted social and economic policies of an out-of-touch Conservative government.  And yes, I mean bigoted, allowing for socio-economic discrimination as a form of bigotry.  But my central voting issue has become social justice, and Labour’s positions on trans people have been pretty off.

The UK has become a very inhospitable place for trans people.  I worry for my trans brothers and sisters.  I don’t understand why a society would choose to hurt us rather than just be supportive or at least silent.

In all the places that I travel to and through, however, the UK stands alone as the place where I have experienced actual physical violence for being trans and receive constant commentary in the streets.  Teenagers too. “Disgusting,” is a personal favourite.  It is a perfect example of what happens when we make it okay to hate.  Nobody ever says or has ever said anything to me in any other country that could be construed as negative.  In the US, people go out of their way to tell me they are supportive, as if to underline that they are not like those people on the TV.

I drove home from England.  Through France and down into Italy.  We stopped for dinner in Champagne.  The French waiter sang out to me, “good evening Madam,” as I crossed the threshold.  It was such a welcome change.  Such small things.

Mis-gendering hurts.  I attended a ceremony in honour of one of my children, a very formal affair, and I was dressed to the nines in a long dress, mint green, kitten heels, hair done up, make-up, I looked the bomb.  And this usher dared to “sir” me.  I was so taken aback and in the solemnity of the occasion, didn’t jump on it as I should have done—there was also a sea of people behind me, but I’m like, ‘what is the matter with you?  Are you so lost up your own axxhole that you just have to take a jibe?  Do you think it is appropriate to say ‘sir’ to someone who is clearly not a ‘sir’?  It is exhausting and hurtful.  And my default response has been and will be more and more a zero tolerance.

I took one of my kids out for tea and the same thing happened, only I upbraided the manager who did it.  “I’m sorry, do I really look like a sir to you?  How many ‘sirs’ have breasts?  How many ‘sirs’ come into your café in heels and a dress?  Are you telling me that I am not woman enough for you?  That anything you see that doesn’t correspond to your version female is ‘sir’?

“I’m sorry Madam,” he said, “I am delighted for you to be in my shop.”  And he apologized again.

My child was embarrassed.  Isn’t that what parents are for?

I wrote about how nice it was to come home.  But that process began when I crossed the Channel and entered France and was welcomed and received everywhere I went as a woman.  Don’t get me started on the bathroom queues.  I know that I look more like a woman now.  If I look back at the selfie timeline I have taken since my transition began, the changes are subtle but over enough time, dramatic.  I have a bit more surgery coming up and both of those interventions will serve to feminise my body and face more overtly.  One will be in Texas of all places, and the other in San Francisco, my new second home.

What is it about the UK, about the Brits, that makes us so unable to embrace difference and diversity?  Is it because we are an island nation?  A trait which amplifies our xenophobia?  Is being trans just one more thing to hate as the ‘other’?  It seems plausible.

And why are the French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italians, Greeks so good at ‘live and let live’?  Why do they never get my gender wrong?  I feel like in England I could be standing in front of someone in a bikini, so obviously physically female, and I would still be gendered ‘sir’.  That is coming from a truculence of character that says “I will put you in a box of my choosing.”  It is very selfish whatever it is.

I think about these things a lot, especially now, because it is part of my daily reality.  But also because I am honing in on where I want to live going forward.  I don’t have a job.  Doors are opening into the world of BDSM, and becoming a pro-Domme is tantalisingly close.  The right people are helping me, which is the only way anything ever seems to work.

Where does all of this lead? Finding our place in the world begins from how we feel in our skin, how we feel in our bodies. As a trans woman I am an intensely sensitive relationship with my body, tender, complex, but also violent…and settling into me as a woman and living that without compromise has challenges, but is also so worth fighting for.