Another Journey

The rains have returned, at least for now.  We got more rain over the weekend than we’ve had in the last four months combined.  Last night was the full Harvest Moon in a clear sky.  Tomorrow is the autumnal equinox.  And so the wheel of the seasons turns again.

If you look back through this blog, you’ll see that it started out as pictures and some observations as Andrea and I drove around the country.  We love our road trips and have been fortunate to be able to take quite a few of them.  We even set off for all the locations in Johnny Cash’s version of “I’ve Been Everywhere.”  But then that wheel turned, too, and Covid arrived.

In March of last year we were set to drive to New Mexico when our doctor suggested we might rethink that.  He thought it might be safe, but he wasn’t sure.  So little was then known about Covid, he thought we might be safer if we stayed closer to home.  We cancelled our trip and went to the coast for the weekend instead.  That was the last time we travelled more than 50 miles from home.  The wheel turned, and this blog became our journey through Covid.

Covid is still here, of course, but all of life is a journey, and there are many journeys within it.  I am embarking on another journey now – the telling of my journey to wholeness.

In 2017 I wrote a memoir for my daughter, about being born transgender 20 years before the word existed and my struggles to make sense of it.  Through the years I grew in understanding as the world grew in its understanding, too.  In 2009, with the support of friends and my community in Laramie, Wyoming, I was able to begin living as the woman I needed to be.  

I showed the story to a woman near my age; she encouraged me to publish it.  I saw that the story had helped her to better understand what it means to be transgender, and that encouraged me to perhaps send this very private story out into the world.

Over the next four years, I worked to tell the story in a more readable form.  I had a lot of help from friends and from two professional editors.  When I would get discouraged, my son would say: “If it saves one life, it will be worth it.”

I persevered also because so many transgender stories are those of loss and pain.  Those stories are very real, but not all of our stories end in tragedy.  I was lucky.  My story is one of confusion but also of hope and love.  Things can get better.  For all our problems, we as a people are becoming more aware of what it means to be human, and of the natural variety that that entails.

So now my story “In Between” is available at Amazon (tinyurl.com/KateB-InBetween). 

If you read the story, I’d love to know what you think of it.

Be safe.  Be well.

– Kate