Someday I will be divorced. Possibly soon. Not soon enough.
But have you ever noticed that whenever everything comes to a head, there is a feeling of being totally raw? That our emotions come closer to the surface? And they don’t even need to be the same kind of emotions. Once one of them is close to the surface, they all are.
I have been writing as part of the November challenge, as I try to do every year. A new book. Pray that it shall be so. But this year, more than ever before, I am struggling to keep up, but the words that are coming are landing hard.
It has always been that writing is a form of catharsis, self-realisation. Only this time, it is happening something powerful.
A friend has put me in touch with a writing coach, a doula, and her teaching about intent has the bizarre effect of turning the byways of my mind into super-highways.
The work I write about has turned frightfully auto-biographical.
“Write as if nobody is reading it.”
This quote has had a curious effect. In a way it is also relevant in another way to this blog—too many people who know me socially, personally, now know of its existence. That’s my fault. Thankfully, they never read it, or at least not many of them…but it also means that there are constraints on the freedom of expression which was never intended.
Not relevant.
What is relevant is what my voice coach said, the woman who is teaching me to find my voice as a woman. My physical voice. In our bi-weekly session, we often cover things well outside of the mechanics of the voice. Indeed, this is why I hired her.
“I met a trans woman last weekend, another dominatrix, and she sounds so utterly female.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. She said, though, exactly what I say, that voice training is the hardest part of transition. She was 18 months of it, and then she had surgery.”
“Practice matters but finding comfort in your voice is where the work is.”
“The only time it seems to come easy to me, is when I am in session with a client. There’s something about the ‘baby, baby’ part that makes me speak in a more feminine way.”
“I hope this isn’t too direct, but I see you as girl, a young girl, a teenager, maybe younger. Innocent. Vulnerable. You sexualize your voice as a way of hiding. Because you’re afraid of what it feels like to be really you. This innocent, vulnerable little girl.”
“Holy shit. You can see that? How do you see that.”
“You might be my 1,000th client. This is what I do for a living. All day, every day.”
“That’s amazing.”
“You’ll never find your natural voice unless you let your natural voice speak.”
“But how can I do that?”
“Be true to who you are. Let her speak.”
“But its scary. How can I let that little girl speak? It is so much easier to go all boy.”
“Yes, it is. But you are out. Completely out. Publicly out. In ways far more vulnerable than if someone you used to work with might see you.”
“Yes, so what’s the problem?”
“You tell me.”
“She’s so vulnerable. So little.”
“Yes, she is. Are you afraid of her?”
“But she’s so fragile. So innocent.”
“You mean you are.”
I have been seeing a companion whose presence seems to bring out this little girl. I have a waking dream about being this little girl, the me who I am inside, maybe 12 or 14, sitting in a clearing in the forest. Cross-legged, on the ground. There is dappled sunshine splashing down all around, gentle sounds of summer. It is warm. And I am waiting. And then I see her, hear her. She stands at the edge of the clearing. She has come to get me. And we play.
There were some guests that joined us for Thanksgiving this year, including a couple in their early 30’s. I read energy, see things that other’s don’t see. I could feel and identify tension in their relationship that nobody else picked up on, but which my sibling whose friends they were confirmed to me privately later.
“I found her so gorgeous.”
“We all know you found her gorgeous,” one of my children teased.
“What, no way, I thought I hid it well.”
“Nope,” my sibling laughed.
“You’re voice changed every time you spoke to her,” my child said.
“What do you mean?”
“It got all feminine, high pitched, and coy, flirty, gentle, but unmistakably different. It was like you would turn your head to answer her and go from one conversation in man-voice and immediately switch to girl voice. We all noticed it.”
I cooked the most spectacular Thanksgiving meal I have ever prepared: a 2-day brine on an 18lb organic turkey, dry rub, a frequent baste, and an egg-yolk lacquer on the skin which made it glow with a riot of mahogany, chestnut, and golden colours. It was the most succulent turkey ever.
I made the stuffing in muffin cups for the first time, adding egg and parmigiano-reggiano cheese to get them to hold together, but also to give more surface for browning and crisping. It was a genius idea. The obligatory cranberry sauce was supplemented with a homemade with a barely sweet rhubarb, honey, and juniper berry jam.
The table was laden with a turkey giblet and liver parfait. Corn bread from a family recipe that is now on its 5thgeneration, though I confess to have tweaked it from the way my mother made it…and immodestly made it immeasurably better. There were silky mashed potatoes, made smooth by pushing the pulp through a tamis with a rubber spatula. Sauteed and coloured purple sweet potatoes with maple syrup, dried unsweetened cranberry, pecans, and parsley. The colours of the dish were divine. And a refreshing gem lettuce salad with pepitas and a lemon-infused vinaigrette.
The Champagne flowed freely and some switched to Valpolicella, or like me, drank both (why I never drink). For the dessert of pumpkin pie and apple pie made with a spiced rum infused whipped cream very low in sugar as a contrast we drank a succulent Sauterne, tasting of white peach and caramel, candied apricot. It was tart, luscious.
To cap it off, Italian espresso made come si deve fare, and a nightcap of family history and the original source of generational wealth from which I benefit: a whiskey. We haven’t owned the whiskey business since Prohibition, but all three brands still exist.
I did have words with one of my siblings who was threatening to not be ready to sit down on time as they wanted to walk their dog. I already felt the dog shouldn’t be there, as it was not at all trained, a poor reflection on said sibling. It has the unacceptable habit of helping itself to whatever it could find on the kitchen counter, as it did 3 nights in a row.
“I want everyone to the table. Dinner is ready, and that doesn’t include the dog.”
“You don’t need to be stressed,” said my sibling.
“Thank you for telling me how I need to feel,” I snapped.
“What can I do to reduce or remove your stress?”
“Keep your animal out of my field of stress.”
“Where is that?”
“Away from the dinner table, away from the food.”
“I need 10 minutes to take the dog for a walk.”
“Do that, but dinner is being served, so we might not wait.”
“Why can’t you wait?”
“[Sibling name], I’ve been cooking for the last 10 hours and I am delivering this meal right on time, to the minute, to when I said I would. I haven’t had a break all day. All you need to do, all you have needed to do all day long, is to sit down and eat on time. You can figure it out.”
You know what? It worked. They sat down. The dog stayed leashed in another room. And we all had a great time. I didn’t used to be capable of this kind of exchange.
Part of it is that becoming a dominatrix is giving me my voice. But more importantly, my little girl me, my sex change, my being a woman, my not wanting to be a doormat, is coming into its own.
I am teaching my children about boundaries. I am no expert, only that I have spent a lifetime never protecting mine, of being a people pleaser. Of using ‘nice’ as a way to keep people from hurting me. Of not allowing for emotional closeness or physical touch because I was afraid of the consequences. But my hyper vigilance now is so helpful to me wherever I use it. Even more, with my family, who are studded with diehard boundary violators.
Is this every family?
When my extended family was informed of me coming out, of my transition, they were also informed of my divorce. I told them all. They were all polite to my face. But I learned that two of my mother’s siblings reached out to my wife and told her how much they like her, and how my “choice” was not consistent with the teachings of God in one case, and in the other, sympathy for what was described as “a direct assault on her womanhood”. I learned today that the sibling I mentioned above did the same thing, reaching out and writing to her.
To me, this is beyond the pale. Never mind the content. The point is that family should stay out. It is profoundly inappropriate to reach out to the spouse on the other side. Even more so when the toxicity of a divorce is its defining characteristic. More so again when the “other side” is behaving without ethics or regard for the children.
I shared with a cousin that their parent had done this, and how upsetting it was. They agreed and were shocked. A few days ago, I learned from one of my children that this cousin had done the same thing, reaching out to my soon-to-be-ex wife. I can only regard it as misguided, wrong, and as a betrayal. It is that they have taken common cause with my former wife. They are saying that they disapprove.
One of my parents, who was very fond of my former partner, has a boundary respect issue too. I told them, “you need to make a choice. If you pursue a relationship with her, you will not have a relationship with me. If you ever write to her again, I won’t have anything to do with you.”
It is always about them. That they have this need to insert themselves. That has nothing to do with me. But who needs people like that?
Same sibling. Another sibling had organized a friend to come over to speak to me about her expertise in a charity world which I am also in but had asked for advice. Because family was around, instead of letting us just talk someplace quiet, everyone came to the table. The sibling who organized the RDV made a few helpful nudges to suggest how to connect me to various people. The other sibling present, however, kept trying to turn the conversation to their own life, including to things not relevant. Thankfully, everyone else present kept quiet. Thankfully too, my interlocutor, though very polite, kept coming straight back to me to keep the conversation and our limited time together on point. Said sibling did finally get it and got up from the table, but when they came back, interrupted with a non-sequitur.
“I have ADD,” said my guest.
“Have you read Gabor Mate’s book Scattered Minds?”
“It’s not a very good book,” interrupted my sibling. “His book on addiction was superb, though.”
“I found the ADD book fantastic, and I highly recommend it,” I said. “And as someone who also has ADD, it really resonated with me.”
“I have ADD,” said my sibling.
“No, you don’t,” I said, “based on what? Have you been formally diagnosed?”
“No, I haven’t. I self-diagnosed.”
Enough said. It was really good for me to practice being firm and clear.
I had an interesting conversation with my therapist this morning—I figured I should schedule to speak to her the day after Thanksgiving to cope with the aftermath. Most of it was skating around the brilliant surface of irrelevance. One of my favourite pastimes. Have you noticed? It is so deeply ingrained that it has become my voice.
Towards the end of the session, it all came tumbling out. All of the above plus my relationships with a small number of Sex Workers I cherish and what it is that I cherish about seeing them: a version of myself that I have a hard time accessing. My therapist acknowledged what they do for me.
The sibling I have written about here was abusive to me as a child. Emotional torture, physical dominance. They are much older. I have hated them. It was absolutely not safe in my household to let my guard down at all. That’s bad enough, but if you are a little girl in a boy’s body, then what? You learn to become invisible.
So, when I say it is hard to speak, that my voice doesn’t come out in the same way that I used to lie in bed at night, so scared, so scared of the dark, crying out to my mother who never came, or being even more scared, and unable to utter a sound. She’s the one who speaks now. She is the one who is finding her voice.
And in that strange way that all tracks merge, my voice teacher says “that is your real voice, you just need to find the courage to use it.” And my writing doula says the same, “be clear about what you mean when you write.”
And my therapist echoes both when she said, “these are all the same thing: your voice is the clearest expression of who you are.”
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I deeply admire your courage and the strength you’re showing as you grow into the remarkable, awesome woman you are becoming. It’s inspiring to see you standing tall, embracing your identity, and finding your path with such grace and determination.
As for our family of origin – well, like most families, it’s a mix of the good, the bad, and, sometimes, the downright ugly (pun intended). My own family has been, and continues to be, deeply rooted in their ultra conservative Catholic tradition, always clashing fiercely with my life choices – all of them.
But here’s the thing: while the family we’re born into shapes a small part of us, it doesn’t define us for what we really are.
We also have our chosen, or found family—those precious souls we encounter along the way who truly see us. These are the people who make us feel alive, whose presence helps us flourish, and with whom we can simply be ourselves. Around them, our inner voice emerges naturally—clear, confident, and safe. They remind us that family isn’t always about blood; it’s about love, understanding, and the freedom to grow without judgment.
What a beautiful thing to say Raffaello. These are such wise words. Thank you for sharing them, and for being such a wonderfully present reader and contributor. I really appreciate it.