No new post for more than a week, but that doesn't mean nothing has been happening. Rather the opposite. I spent the last week working my way through the new height up the beach of my most recent wave of femme-ache. Last time I posted I trembled on the edge of telling my children this would be my last year living as a man. Now I've settled back to a healthier-feeling, more centered place...resolve undiminished, but wary of excessive urgency; practicing mindfulness through meditation again; and, rather than pushing forward, simply trying to hold myself open to the next stage of metamorphosis, whatever it might be, trusting it to happen when it is what must be.
I continue to wrestle with the question of how to balance my needs with those of my children, and this un-driven openness to change seems the best answer. A deadline by which I will be living full time as a woman frightens me, let alone them. It provokes anxiety and stress, and anyway, it's stupid...so much can happen, too many variables...how can you set a plan and then follow it blindly in such a complicated situation? You can't.
Conversely, I find I am unwilling to resolve to wait, no matter what, until Son14 is out on his own...the want is too strong. I have discovered, it seems, at long last, a limit to my impulse to self-sacrifice. That said, in the end I might still end up taking long enough to get where I'm going that he will never have to explain to puzzled vice-principals that his dad is now his other mom.
No, best is to wait, stay open, stay busy, and concentrate always always on loving them, parenting them. Whether I am a man or woman or in between, they need me. And what I have found is that, by setting no deadlines, I avoid having to have Talks...instead, through living with me and through the moments of conversation and awareness which naturally arise, they are witnessing my process, participating in it. I don't have to Tell them anything. They are smart, observant, open-hearted children. They can see for themselves and ask when they need to and, in the end, find their own answers.
And I find, I don't feel required to feel guilty about that, even though it could be hard for them. I am as I am. I did not choose this. I resolve only to attempt to walk the path before me with as much grace as possible, trusting my children to find their own peace in their own time. And, to always love them, with all my heart...but that doesn't require resolution. I do love them will all my heart, naturally, helplessly, and I always will.
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