In Which Clare Says Something Unpopular About Her Autistic Life

This one is hard to write.

It might not be popular.

What the heck?  I'll just free write it and see how the words come out.  I hope that my community of autistic people will hug me rather than crucify me.

I am in my mid-40s.  For pretty much all of my life I have struggled.  Every single day.  Things used to be a lot worse.

I used to struggle with depression.  Every single day.  Even on the days when I wasn't actually depressed according to any diagnostic criteria there was a dark, dark shadow falling over me and I knew that the depression would return at some point.

I did not like myself and believed that I was, fundamentally, some kind of monster.  As a result I embraced a conservative version of a faith that bolstered my own belief.  It said that yes I was, fundamentally, corrupt.  An evil being, deserving only to burn for eternity in a hell so awful that it was beyond imagining.  That's what the faith taught.  It taught that we were all like that.  Evil.   But it was okay.  Because it preached a God who gave a way out of the consequences of our own disgusting sinfulness.  It preached a solution.  Not necessarily to our own evil.  At least not in this life.  But a solution that meant God wouldn't be angry anymore and wouldn't throw us all in the fire for ever and ever and ever.  I already believed in my own monsterhood.  And so I embraced that faith thoroughly.

Yeah, I did not like myself.  And conservative Christianity gave both hope and an excuse to keep on saying mea maxima culpa.  I have grievously sinned.  And so has everyone else.

That all changed three years ago when I embraced and welcomed myself as a transgender woman.  The dark shadow lifted for the first time in my life.  In one day it was gone.  It was like a miracle.  A miracle I had prayed for over two decades of faith.  In many ways it was a miracle.  For someone who believed as I did to say "Yes, I'm transgender and that's okay," couldn't be described better than with a word such as miracle.

I had already begun a process of healing, of moving from self hatred, self abuse, hopelessness that I could ever be truly happy or content.

From that day I began the process of healing, of coming to the point at which I could honestly say I both love and like myself.  The process is still not complete three years later.  I have come a very long way.  But there are still moments.  There are still unfair self critiques.

The shadow had gone.

But that didn't mean everything was fixed.  Yes, I had a long spell of euphoria.  A long period of exploring the new freedom to be myself.  And - in amongst all the fear, the verbal abuse, the struggles that most transgender people share - all of that was wonderful.  More than wonderful.  Today I don't quite have the words to describe what it is like to live under that shadow, that crushing weight, that night of darkness, and then to have it all lifted away and to finally see the sun and know that the shadow will not return.

But after the euphoria, then what?

Then I had to look at myself honestly.  And see that many of the struggles I had always known - every day - were still there.  Social struggles.  Sensory struggles.  Anxiety struggles.  And removing my depression, removing my self-loathing, didn't remove these struggles.

And these were things I had been trying to solve for most of my life.  They were things I had received therapy for.  I had read the self help books.  I had prayed almost unceasingly at times.  Through the treatments for depression (which never worked because they didn't tackle the cause) I also sought treatment for my own struggles, struggles I thought intimately bound up with depression.

I looked.  And it was all still there.

Unsolved.

Uncured.

And although I didn't talk about them with everyone like I do now, they affected my life profoundly.

People didn't know.

My coping mechanisms and the masks I wore made it look for the most part that I was reasonably okay a reasonable amount of the time.

I struggled on.

Social struggles.  Sensory struggles.  Anxiety struggles.

I wanted them solved.

To put it bluntly:   I WANTED A CURE.

____________________

And then, nearly two years ago I started to think about myself another way.  I got talking with some people about their lives.  Their problems.  And I realised through much thought, much discussion, much reading, and much to my surprise and shock, that something which was true for them was true for me too.

They were autistic adults.

And I learned that I am an autistic adult too.  I'd been putting off learning that truth for many years.  Because of stigma.  Because of shame.

The process of realisation and acceptance and then seeking diagnosis took much of last year.

It was incredibly difficult, far more so than anything else I have ever done in my life.  I thought it would be pretty easy but I turned out to be completely wrong.  Hey, I've gone through the gender transition thing.  At least socially, although the medical side won't be done and dusted for a long while yet.  The medical side is simple.  The social side is complex.  And the acceptance of myself as Clare, when it finally happened, was quite easy.  Gender transition isn't easy.  Surely a little thing like autism would be a doddle after the whole changing my name and wearing frocks thing!

Autism. 

Now that was hard.  Excruciatingly hard.

One word changed everything.  Every single aspect of my life and my being needed to be reexamined in light of that word.  Everything became open to intense scrutiny as I began to understand myself a lot better.

It was hard.  It is hard still.   It's been ten months since the official diagnosis.  I am still working through the ramifications.  People tell me it's a process that can take many years.  People agree that it can be tough.

But this new knowledge was wonderful.  Totally, beautifully wonderful.

Now I had an explanation.  I had a reason why things had always been as they were.

There were so many things I had always felt guilty about, or ashamed about.  And now they had a word.  They had a name.  There was a reason for me being as I was.  There was no cause for guilt.  No shame.  No whipping myself about social struggles, sensory struggles, anxiety struggles.

And in that I could breathe.  In that I could find pride in myself.  Autistic pride.  I hold it still.

But.

Social struggles.  Sensory struggles.  Anxiety struggles.

Every single day.  Without remission.  Without rest.  Without any break at all.

There are much better days.  There are much worse days.  But they are there.

In some way they will always be there.  Always.  Always.  Fucking Always.

This is my autism.  This is how being autistic plays out now.   For forty years.  For many years to come - hopefully many, many years because I would dearly love to live as many years as someone who knows herself as an autistic woman as I did as someone who lived as a man and would never have accepted the autism label.

And what are these struggles?

They are the very things I fought against for so many years.  They are the thinks I wanted a solution for.

I wanted a cure then.

Now they are named.

And I know there is no cure.

But sometimes.  Some days.  When things are bad and I know I have the rest of my life to experience it all.

On those days.

I WANT A CURE.

Why should I not want a cure?  I wanted one before I had an explanation.  Why shouldn't I still want one?

It's irrelevant in a way.  There is no cure.  Being autistic is a part of my identity and it always will be.  There is good in that.  There is.  And I happily wear my autistic pride badges and bracelet and often a necklace that just says "Autistic".   I recognise that autism gives me gifts as well as hardships.

I am proud of me.  And I am proud of all the other autistic people who struggle every day, and all the autistic people for whom autism is far more debilitating than it is for me - for the ones who will need twenty-four hour care every day until they die.

I am proud of them all.  Because autism is fucking difficult.  For me it is that difficult every day.  Every day.

And on some of them.  If I am honest.  As I am being publicly honest right now:

I WANT A CURE.  A fucking cure so I don't have to endure what I endure.  Yes, one that would leave my personality intact - which would probably be an impossibility.

I say that knowing that it's not a popular view.  We're all meant to be proud.  We're all meant to be autism positive.  We're all meant to cultivate our autistic space, autistic identity, autistic culture, to fight for acceptance not just awareness, for accommodations to help us, to say that we're autistic and we're bloody wonderful.

Yeah.  I can do all that.  And I will keep doing all that.  Because, as the saying goes, we are different but not less.  I believe that.  Firmly.  Without hesitation.

And yet.

On some days.  I want a cure.

There.  I've said it.  The unpopular thing.



[1611 words - far more serious ones than the 2700 written earlier for Blob Thing's blog.  Read those words for light relief.]

Remembrance of Times Past: How The Living Earth and The White Lodge Saved Me

Thirty years and a couple of months ago I was in a mess.  I had been talking about committing suicide and my parents didn't know what to do so they sought medical advice.

I was taken to see a child psychiatrist who said I needed immediate long term hospitalisation, a range of drugs and ECT. Urgent.  She wanted me placed into the child psychiatric hospital in the county.

Somehow that didn't happen. I didn't want it to even though the psychiatrist had pretty much built up the hospital as a fun place to be.  Hey, fun.  A child receiving ECT in 1985.  Fun, fun, fun.  I realised that the good things she had said were not that good and that the experience would be hell not help for me.  I was totally distraught the next day.  I've cried a lot since that day but probably never as bitterly and uncontrollably.

In a state of complete worry my mother asked some people we had met that year for advice. They recommended that I be taken somewhere that might help me. It was called White Lodge.

The woman I met there was named Judy Fraser and she counseled me and led me to a place where I could lead myself out of the darkness and survive and find a way. There has been a lot of darkness since then but I firmly believe that without White Lodge and without Judy, I would have died.

Plain and simple.  If we hadn't found White Lodge I would not have reached adulthood.  I would have committed suicide.  There is no questioning that.

The cover of this little book shows one small part of the place that used to be White Lodge.

The first time we met I somehow knew I was in a safe place. At the end of that session Judy gave me a few things. I have none of them now. Among those things was a cassette of "new age" music. I played it a great deal. I lost the cassette a lot of years ago but I've thought of it often because the simple, peaceful music helped me in bad times.

This post has arisen from thinking about that cassette.  I saw some CDs by Medwyn Goodall in a charity shop today.  I have some others by him that I haven't played in while and rather than buying more CDs I wondered if his music could be found on YouTube.  It can.  Lots of it.

And then my brain asked.  "What about that cassette that Judy gave me?  That cassette which stayed with me through that deathly dark period.  It was never released on CD.  But is it on YouTube?"

And yes.  It's there. Yay!  I looked a couple of years ago and it wasn't there but someone uploaded it last summer.  Since then it has received 115 views.  Popular music.  But more so than something else I looked up once.  That had received a total of zero views before I looked at it.

It's simple. It's probably nothing special. But listening to it now takes me back to listening to it then.  It's not the best instrumental music ever created.  And there is background hiss from the transfer from a maybe thirty year old cassette.  But these simple notes and melodies take me right back to a place of comfort in my pain and a place where bright light shone into my blackness.

I am grateful for the cassette. Grateful for Judy. Grateful for White Lodge. Grateful that I didn't die at the age of fifteen. Grateful to be alive.  I am so grateful.

And proud too that I have got this far.  Proud that I have got through all the dark years of self hatred, all the years in which I didn't know whether I would make it.  Proud that in the last few years I have been learning to accept myself.

Annie Locke has a website.  http://www.innerharmoniesmusic.co.uk/  The tracks are available to buy.  It's tempting.  Because they are an important part of my own history.

I bought a book of daily readings today too - for fifty pence - by a woman I had not heard of before coming to White Lodge.  I hastily disposed of her books when I became a Christian.  Unchristian!  Unclean!  Satanic!  [yes, I did used to think that way.]  That woman is Eileen Caddy, one of the founders of the Findhorn Community.  The circle turns, the paths lead to the beginning.  I now have many of the books from my White Lodge days again and approach them from a very different place and perspective than I ever could have done thirty years ago.

Eileen Caddy writes, as part of today's reading:

Do what you know you must do because it is something which has been revealed to you from within, not from without.  Always know from within that what you are doing is right; then you can go right ahead and sweep all obstacles aside with real strength and conviction. Know that I AM your compass, I AM your guide, and I will lead you to your goal, no matter how difficult the path may appear to be.

Now that's a challenge.  But it's one that I am increasingly determined to commit to.

I am Me. I am Free. I have Mental Health Problems. And I am not Ashamed

It's my dad's birthday today.  He has a form of dementia and is in a very well run care home in Sussex.  It's great that he's there and I know he's being very well looked after.  He used to be in other homes and his care, or lack of it at times, was a constant worry.  It's just a shame that he's so far away but he's as well off where he is as he would be in any home up here.

On Facebook this morning I wrote a post wishing him a happy birthday - which he won't ever see - and expressed my regrets that due to my mental health I haven't been able to get down there and see him in a long time, far longer than I'd like.  Hopefully he'll enjoy the big box of chocolate, liquorice and bubbles I sent down.  They don't make up for me not being able to be there but unfortunately that can't be helped just now.

Someone wrote this comment:

Mental health, Claire....? You have freed yourself to be what you are!


She's written comments like that before.  They annoy me and if it happens again it'll be a sacking offence.  Bye, bye, my life will not be diminished by losing you and your comments.  It's not enriched in the slightest by having someone who is a bully about my mental health - as a friend put it to me in the last ten minutes.  I don't like the phrase toxic friend.  But she is being a toxic friend.  I don't like unfriending people.  But my friend is right: I don't want to be bullied either.

I have responded to the latest comment like this: 


As a friend said of you this morning, "That woman really doesn't get it, does she?"

I'm autistic dear. It's hard. It's bloody hard. Every day. It always was and in some ways always will be no matter how well I learn to understand myself, accept myself, and deal with it.

I also have comorbidities that if they don't have a biological root have a root in four decades of having to live as someone else and being ashamed of who I am. And hey, things are so much better than they used to be. Pretty much every year until a few years ago my wife would not know if I would be alive by the end or whether I would have committed suicide. Even at the best of times when I smiled and got on with some enjoyable things there was a shadow of darkness. The worst shadows faded with self acceptance.

But self acceptance also brings knowledge that although in some ways I am very able, in others I am disabled and that my disability is lifelong. There is no fix. Because I am autistic.

Mental health issues can exist side by side with being who you are. I hope that one day you can come to understand that instead of jumping in to question the fact of someone's mental health when they're just trying to say happy birthday to their father.

Some of the most free people I know also have mental health conditions. They just do. And it's nothing to be ashamed of.

Anyway. Happy birthday dad. That's the important thing today. To wish him a happy birthday.



I felt cross so followed it up with this little addition:

By the way - if you could learn to spell my name before criticising me for having mental health issues that would be great. It's written there for you at the start of every post I make so there's really no excuse for you to continually get it wrong is there?



I think that's fair!  I don't always succeed but I try to be fair.  And I wish my dad a happy birthday.

Thoughts on Autistic Hair-Dryers and Neurotypical Toasters.

I've said this before:  I thought that coming to terms with being autistic would be simple but the reality has been that it's possibly the most difficult thing I've ever done.  Yes, this is another one of those "Learning to be Autistic" posts.

As time goes by I begin to realise some of the reasons why it's so hard.

Last night I was writing to someone and used a metaphor for my life - that I'd tried for decades to be a washing machine but it turned out I was a bicycle.

This morning I mentioned this to someone else, who said "Great metaphor ... it's like this ..."  And she showed me a blog post, "A hair-dryer kid in a toaster-brained world."  And that's a much better metaphor so for this little post I'm stealing it.  I hope she doesn't mind me borrowing her rather fabulous metaphor.  If you're not stopping right now to read that post, I can recommend that you do so.

The metaphor explains some of the reasons why I, along with many undiagnosed adult autistics, had a difficult life and why being diagnosed throws up so many more difficulties rather than it just being a pretty rubber stamp on a piece of paper.

The author of the blog explains some things - as to how the autistic brain is quite simply different to the NT (neurotypical) brain and how autistic people thus have different skills to NT people and can have great problems in a world that simply isn't geared to autistic people's needs.  So if you grow up knowing you're autistic you can grow up knowing that you are different - but never less - and learn to be the best version of you that you could be.

But if you are autistic and grow up not knowing that then things become harder.

If you don't know you're autistic then you grow up ignorant of your hair-dryer self and are taught to emulate the toaster people.  You spend your life trying to make toast.  And you keep trying.  And keep trying.  And you fail so many times.  And even when you spend an age working very hard to make toast it ends up looking like very strange toast.  You spend your life wondering how everyone seems able to make toast so easily.  You look at the way the toast just pops up in their lives, how they have heat settings, a defrost button, a neat tray to catch all the crumbs.  And you do everything in your power to toast bread, muffins, crumpets just as they do and to toast in different ways.  Life becomes a frustration of failing to toast bread and you know you're failing and a failure because you think that you're created to be a toaster.  You're a bit useless because your toast making capabilities have obviously been destroyed.  But you keep trying each day to fit in as a good, functioning toaster.

So life can become very difficult and then you can be given all kinds of diagnoses as to why you're a rubbish toaster.  You're a toaster with borderline personality disorder.  You're a toaster with schizotypal personality disorder.  You're schizoid.  You're schizophrenic.  You're narcissistic.  You're depressed and that can only be solved by drugs and then therapy to become a working toaster.  I've received all those diagnoses and all those experts who diagnosed me completely missed the truth that I'm autistic and transgender.

In short you're a complete mess.  Because you can't make a decent slice of toast.

But then, eventually, you learn the joyful truth:  You're not a toaster after all.  You're a hair dryer.  Bliss.  Wonderment.  Excitement of excitements.  You were never meant to make toast at all.  You're not a failure, you just can't do something that you weren't made to do.  Then you read and study and learn that as a hair-dryer there are lots of things you can do.  And you think that's the end of it.  I'm autistic.  Hallelujah! That explains it all.  Let's move on with the rest of my life as an autistic hair-dryer.

It doesn't work out that way.

What I've learned is that learning you are autistic changes everything.  Everything.  Your entire life has to be seen and understood in a brand new, unfamiliar way.  And that process can become more difficult than you could possibly have imagined.

Today I've been thinking hard about just one aspect of this process: the coping mechanisms and all the things I learned over decades to get through life.  And today I come to a stark conclusion:  All those things were learned in order to get through life as some kind of toaster.  I sought so hard to be what I'd now call neurotypical, rather than seeking to be gloriously autistic and proud of who I really am.

That means I've now got to set myself to examine everything I ever found to get through life.  Because I am not a toaster and no longer want to be a toaster.  I don't want to try to make toast and be a terrible version of something that I never was in the first place.  I want to be me and learn to become the very best version of myself that can exist in this world, to become free, to become fully human, fully myself, fully at one with autism and and with every other aspect of myself.

I need to look at every coping strategy.  Every bit of therapy.  Every self-help technique.  Every little tip I've got in order to get through the day while trying to make toast.  And I've got to ask myself serious questions about them:

Will this strategy help me to become free as myself, or will it hinder that process due to being wholly centred around toast making?
If the strategy is a toast-centric strategy, can it teach me anything about how to be a hair-dryer?
What strategies are equally applicable for a toaster and a hair-dryer?  And I know that there are many things that are good tools for everyone to use.  Because we're all human and whether autistic or NT we share our humanity and share so many traits as individual human beings.
If a toast strategy does turn out to be of use, does that actually make it something I want to continue with, or are there other strategies that would more effectively help me learn to be myself?
What strategies are stopping me shine, stopping me live - even though I might have spent many years using them in order to try to shine and live?
And what new strategies could I learn to replace the old?  Strategies that will help me be who I was always meant to be.

I don't know the answers to any of those questions yet.  It's going to be an interesting ride finding the answers.

Simple Words of Spirit - Received in a time of Complicated Doubt

January 2015. Written in darkness, in temptation to deeper depression – I realise that January is often like that for me, in a week of major doubt. Written in deep wondering whether God is real, whether Spirit is real, or whether I was just fooling myself with an idea, or a collection of ideas.

Like before I was told to pick up a pen and listen and write down what was heard. This time the words were simple. Simple concepts. Because when it comes down to it there isn't anything complicated about a call to return to what's already in the heart. Everything here is easy to understand – and actually easy to do if I let go of all the self-created obstacles. In truth there is nothing in the way of the spiritual walk or the path of learning to serve (are they the same thing?) unless we put it there ourselves.

Parts of the writing that came in the months before that night are more complicated – or at least less simple! Some of it I don't understand with much clarity at all. But this is obvious. A reminder of what is pretty much in lesson one for many of us. The previous writing won't get shared. And any further writing – once I'm quiet enough to hear again – probably won't be shared either. This only gets shared because of its simplicity and its broad applicability to the life of pretty much anyone at some time or other.

One thing – the phrase “the Christ” is a wide one. It doesn't have to imply being a church-going Christian, although I am one and am most definitely called to be an active part of the particular church of which I am a part. The phrase doesn't necessarily have to imply believing Jesus is alive or even that he ever was alive.  Take the phrase for whatever you want to take it.

Fooling myself? Perhaps. Are these words coming from beyond? Are they from somewhere closer to the essence and truth of the Self? Or are they just what my conscious mind says once all the analysis and over-thinking gets turned off? Or all three working together? Simple answer, I cannot say with anything approaching certainty.

Perhaps you have lost the way. But what is the way? And if you have lost it, can you not find it again and walk once more in the path awaiting you? You have allowed yourself to stray, to wander. You have allowed other concerns to impede the one concern. You already know how to return – to read, to pray, to meditate, to serve, to seek that purity.

And though you may at this time feel alone, you are not alone. Deep inside, at your core, you know that you are never alone. And you know that you were placed where you are for reasons beyond your imagination. You are not alone. I am with you. We are with you. Always.

All that remains is that you walk again, cry out again, seek again the within and the without. You can do it because you have strength and will be given strength.

You are tempted to give up. You are tempted to fall away. You ask if there is any point and you ask again whether that which is real is Real.

Do not give in. Focus on the safety. Focus on the revelations of the past until you reach again the revelations of the present – or at least the realisation that you are always in that place.

Again, you are not alone. Your essence is safe. I will be with you, for you, beside you, within you, embraced firmly in passionate love. I will never let you go and will continue to draw you, prod you, lead you and show you the ways into the Way, your Way, your Centre.

Remember the words – the Christ IS your path, the Christ IS at the centre of your being. Look to the Christ. Always. Unfailing. Unceasing. To the Christ. To the Victor. Return.

Return. Listen to the call and return into hope, into fire, into that growth into Being. Pray again. Sit again, alone with me. There is nothing to fear in Way, Being, Life. Come to me again and rejoice. This cannot be said enough. Rejoice. Rejoice.

That's all. You know what needs to be done. Look inside, find the answer. Rejoice. In love, rejoice. Return. In Christ, return. Recommit. To the path, recommit. You know it. Only you can do it. Only you. But never only you – never alone.

Yes, that which is real IS Real. Believe again. Know again. And again, run into reality.

18 Months - The Best of My Life

Eighteen months ago tonight I came out to myself as transgender, as a woman, in a way which left no possible room for denying the truth about who I am.  That night was the end of a process of finding space, of allowing myself to explore my thoughts and feelings with an honesty which had not been possible before.  On that night I stood in front of the mirror in a skirt and blouse, for the first time able to dress in such clothes without feeling great shame.  And I recognised myself for who I am.  I spent much time talking with myself as I stood at the mirror, and welcomed Clare into her existence - I already knew my name through dreams.  Until that night I could, had I so chosen, locked everything away again and gone back to the way things were, put the recent thoughts and experiments down to an aberration, a mistake.  After that night there was no possibility of going back.

That was the end of a process of experimenting with self-honesty but it set the course for the rest of my life.  Eighteen months on I look back and can say that it has been the best time of my life.  The best.

Here are just some of the things that have happened:

• My mother died of cancer.
• My father became seriously ill with dementia.  He's now in a care home having spent several months in hospital.  He broke one hip while in a different care home.  He broke the other hip while in the hospital.  And being hundreds of miles away I've been able to do nothing to help him and have had to leave everything to other family members.
• My cherished Christian faith died, very painfully, over the course of a year.
• We've had all the usual sort of family problems here - plus a few more.  But I don't talk of those online.
• I have been sexually assaulted.  The police couldn't find the assailant.
• I have received much verbal abuse in the street for dressing as I dress.  Thankfully that's pretty rare now but to being with it happened pretty much every time I left the house.
• I've spent sixteen of the eighteen months waiting for medical treatment.  That treatment has only just begun.

Yes, plenty of horrible things have happened.  Most people would say that the year in which they basically lose both their parents, their faith, and undergo abuse and assault would be among the worst in their lives.  Circumstances have indeed been pretty poor in many respects.

So how can I say that the last eighteen months have been the best of my life?  How bad must the experience of my first forty years have been if so much can have happened and it still be my best time?

It's simple.  I have lived these months as myself, free.  I have learned to love myself.  I have learned that the truth of who I am does not to be utterly crushed, despised.  I have learned that I am not a thing of shame.

And I've remembered and healed a lot of my past.  All the clues and thoughts and acts that I'd suppressed for so long.  Many painful memories and many confusing memories.  They're still coming to light now.  Just this week I remembered things from my childhood.  Words said to me by my parents - who were of course doing their best but in the 1970s couldn't see past their little boy.  But words that led me further into Hell and the long attempt at self-annihilation.  Remembering them hurt.  A lot.  But now they can be left behind and peace can be found.  Some of that language may sound over dramatic.  I promise you that it isn't.

It's been the best eighteen months of my life.  And that brings my past into sharp relief.  I knew it was bad.  For thirty years even the best of days contained the shadow of depression, ever felt.  So many episodes of mental illness.  So many years of not knowing if I'd be alive by Christmas.  So many years in which others had to suffer through that uncertainty.  Looking at photographs from my life is hard as there are very few in which I cannot see signs of that shadow.  Even on the days of many smiles those photos display pain, if you know what to look for.  Comparing my present with my past shows me just how awful my inner life was for all those years.

There are a lot of challenges involved with being transgender.  But the chance to be who I really am outweighs pretty much any rubbish that life could throw my way.  Because, accepting myself and being Clare took away the cause of that shadow of depression

I've lost friends.  But I've gained more friends.  And my wife and child stand by me giving full support for me being who I truly am.  I am truly fortunate.
I've lost that faith.  But I've gained a better faith.  And have written much about that wild journey.
I've cried many tears in the difficulties.  Many more tears for my parents.  Many more tears as the past has come to light and been grieved for and healed.  But I've also learned the meaning of crying tears of joy.
I've suffered transphobic abuse.  But I've grown stronger through battling onwards regardless.  And I've been fortunate.  The abuse has only been verbal.  I know others who have been less fortunate.
I've been sexually assaulted.  There aren't many "buts" to that.  But it could have been a lot worse than it was.  Many women are sexually assaulted.  I don't want to belittle what happened to me but so many women have suffered far worse assaults, or repeated assaults, or rape.  I count myself fortunate.
I've experienced fear as I never felt it before.  But I've overcome that fear in walking into freedom.
I've lost my mother.  But that last year was precious, to be able to share just that short time with her, knowing she was proud of her daughter.
I've lost my father - though he is of course still living.  I must admit that the silver lining is harder to find when I think of him and the sadness we all have for everything that his illness has brought to him.
I've remembered much pain from my past.  But I've been able to clean those events and words, repair wounds, and leave them behind so the future can be better.
I've waited so long for treatment - for the physical help in being who I am, having transitioned mentally and socially last year.  But the treatment has begun, just about.  I'm now on the lowest dose of oestrogen and waiting for my next appointment which should lead to increased hormonal treatment.  Waiting impatiently - as every timeline I've been given in the last eighteen months turned out to be a false expectation.  That next appointment, from what I was told, should have been this week.  It will be next year.

I know who I am.  And I accept who I am, embrace myself in love.  That in turn enables me better to receive love from others and to show love too.  The changes are immense.  I find myself doing things, frequently, that the old me wouldn't have done.  I'd either not have conceived of being able to do them or felt great shame that I couldn't do them.

I know that there is still quite a way to go.  The healing is not complete.  And without too much trouble I could make a long list of things I don't do but would be better for doing.  And a list of things I do and say that would be better left undone or unsaid.  A long way to go but the difference between now and then is to me nothing short of a miracle.

Yes.  The past year and a half has been full of the most difficult things I've ever faced.  Full of pain.  Full of challenge.

Yes.  Those months have also been the very best of my life so far.  The very best.  By a very, very long way.  Simply because they have been lived free.

What Did It Cost To See My Sin Upon the Cross - Part 2

"I'll never know how much it cost too see my sin upon that cross."


As I said in part one, I loved that line.  But now?  No.

I no longer believe in the fall, in redemption, in any God who can't forgive without bloody sacrifice.  I can't believe in that cross-story no matter how clever the theologian is in justifying Jesus' death overcoming the threat of some kind of hell by raising up God as just or holy or by lowering man, even to the extent of Calvinism's "total depravity".

How can it be just to eternally condemn someone born fallen and living a finite, time-bound life?
How can it possibly be holiness to condemn so profoundly?
How can I call a human being, "beautifully and wonderfully made", a being born in sin, born depraved, born broken?

I no longer believe Jesus was crucified to take away our sin.  I no longer believe that we're "washed in the blood of the lamb."

Another song last night was about Jesus.  It ends with the orthodox claim that Jesus is God.  There's nothing unusual about hearing that sung in a church.

I loved that claim too.  But now?  No.

The creeds call Jesus "fully God, fully man."  I had a solid belief in this picture of Jesus.  One path of reasoning ran:

Who has the right to pay for our sin?  Only one who is fully man.  Who has the ability to pay for our sin?  Only one who is fully God.  Therefore Jesus must be fully God and fully man else redemption - forgiveness - is impossible.

But I no longer believe in this redemption.  And an argument that implies that God (who is love and mercy) can only find a way to forgive if God himself dies has more than its share of problems.

I don't seek to condemn those who do believe in that redemption - if that is for them their path to the divine, the path to life in abundance, to being the fullness of what it is to be a human being.  If others find fullness in the sacrifice of the cross - and what came after in the story - then that is good.  The real is far bigger than my searching or my conclusions and can embrace what sounds like a contradiction.  The story of the blind men and an elephant has recently come to my mind frequently.  The elephant is the real.  Our religious stories are our attempts to vocalise a part of the elephant. 

I believe Jesus is fully divine - but only in the sense that we're all fully divine.

And I believe that Jesus is fully man.  Fully man.  More man than any one of us.  He is the Tao.  He is the superman.  He is the one living the full life we're all called to live and able to live if we believe it and do it and be it.  Jesus, possibly, is more fully man than any human who has ever lived.  In that way he's a pattern for life.  A pattern we can all contemplate, no matter our religious views.

And I believe that one reason he died, one reason why he hung on the cross, was because he was fully man.  We are not fully man.  And we can't cope well with those who are more fully man than we are ourselves.  They don't make for comfortable companions.  He was condemned because his light brought the lives of those around him into sharp focus.

He came to bring us life in abundance and we couldn't face it.  In the end most of us prefer the safety of half-lives.  Indeed we seek safety.  But the fullness of life isn't safe.  It's risky.  It's a raging inferno, not just a warm radiator.  Even Christianity has become about seeking safety - an idea carried over from ancient Hebrew thoughts developed in an even more dangerous world.  "You are our security" we sing.  "You are our rock, our hiding place."  But Jesus didn't come to give us safety, he came to show us life and showed us life in himself.

Nietzsche talked of the superman, Übermensch, as the meaning of the world.  He believed no superman had walked the world and contrasted Übermensch with Christianity.

I believe that Jesus was an Übermensch, showing in himself the meaning of the world.  I believe that Christianity is  still the contrast, that Christians raised up Jesus to be "fully God" because they couldn't deal with the "fully man" that Jesus showed himself to be.

How can a man be like this?  We're not like this so how can any man be like this?  Christians answer that he must be God.

I answer that Jesus can be an example for us, a vision by which we can learn for ourselves to be the over-comers, more human than we are today, more in the Tao, more enlightened, to be Buddha, to be Übermensch, or whatever word suits.

Back to the song.  "I'll never know how much it cost to see my sin upon the cross."

I know what it cost me.  It cost me twenty years.  I embraced Christianity because I didn't like myself - and the Christianity I heard of told me I was right, told me I deserved Hell but this God loved me anyway.  A nice story.  But I now believe a false story and it reinforced and reinforced what I thought of myself, a sinner in need of mercy.  And the Christianity I received reinforced the view that I could not be me - female.  Very sad.  I know full well that not every Christian has such opinions but I haven't found many that would agree that people aren't utterly without hope and real meaning and purpose outside of receiving Jesus, the saviour who died.  Very few that say there would be "salvation" without Jesus dying for us.

Seeing my sin on the cross meant that I carried on seeing myself as a sinner, hopeless without Christ, someone who could do nothing without that personal God stepping in.

It meant I spent twenty years crying out for a mercy I didn't need.  Over and over, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner."

It meant I spent twenty years rejecting myself and believing I should carry on rejecting myself.  I could say "I'm accepted by God" but believed I wasn't really accepted - especially my gender.

It meant I spent twenty years suffering with a recurrent depressive illness that hurt me and hurt everyone around me and nearly led at times to my death.  Yes, I suffered with this before embracing Christianity but for me embracing that religion was a confirmation of my depression.  My first church told me - especially through its extensive library of taped sermons from different speakers - that gay people should be cured.  And I've been told that transgender people are deranged, evil, demon possessed and they too need healing of this abominable wickedness.

Seeing my sin upon the cross, instead of leading to the fullness of life that Jesus came to show us led to a half-life, a life in which I could not be who I am, a life in which I could combine great shame and guilt with a thankfulness that someone agreed to be punished in my place.

That's what it cost to see my sin upon the cross.

I loved to see it there.  But, I believe, it was never there in the first place.

Jesus was there showing me that in order to live to the full it is necessary to risk everything, sometimes even unto death.  Jesus was there showing me love, life, paradox, meaning, the beauty of a man prepared to give everything.  Jesus, fully man, still name above all names, still awesome and magnificent, living in his full divinity and showing us our full divinity, living in his full humanity and showing us our full humanity.  Jesus.  Jesus.  Jesus.  May we learn to live the truth - that we are fully divine and fully human.

I have lost what I had.  Losing it - losing my security - has been a frightening process at times.  Giving up your one hope isn't easy.

In the process I've gained a better life, a life I've only just started to explore.  The wounds of the old life are still too fresh to be prodded and poked without an agony of inner burning. And that's one reason why a church service can hurt so much.

I am not hurt because others see their sin upon the cross.  I am not hurt to see others praising their God.  If this is the way people approach the divine and find the sacred in life then I have no problem with that - as long as the approach doesn't become exclusive (as mine once was) and thus condemnatory to everyone with another approach.  As long as their story isn't used to nullify my story and the stories of all who seek then their story can lead them to great light.

My pain is not caused by the words themselves but by the relationship I've had with them - the reasons for my belief, my adoration of that belief, and my loss of that belief.

What Did It Cost to See My Sin Upon the Cross? - Part 1

I found being in church services yesterday painful.

I love the people.  Last night's sermon was great.  And it was scholarly.  It's not available online yet but it will be.  Last week's sermon is available and I can highly recommend listening to it on the MCC Newcastle website.  I love that community of faith and am inspired by people there and have a better life as a result of knowing them.

But being in the service hurt.  Like being repeatedly stabbed or punched in the heart and head.  It's not the people, not the tunes, not the loving family that the church feels like.  It's me.  It's my vastly changing faith.  A faith that is still changing and developing.

I think the problem is that for so many years I loved the liturgy.  I loved the doctrine.  I loved the story.  I loved the salvation tale.  The story told me what I wanted to hear.  For twenty years I built my life around the story, embracing the tale of my fallenness and of a purpose for this sinner who didn't deserve it.

I loved my faith.  At times I was obsessive about my faith.  There were times I could pray for hours.  Times I'd be at church an hour before services, sometimes even waiting outside until the doors were unlocked.  Times I'd spend that hour in silence - especially in my Catholic years, praying, knelt before the Blessed Sacrament, enjoying the peace and seeking a particular version of God in the peace.

I loved my faith.  Wild, desperate love.

And now I do not have that faith.

And so the liturgy, the prayers and the songs hurt as they are said and sung.

A song last night included the line "I'll never know how much it cost too see my sin upon that cross."

I used to love that line.  My sin.  Dealt with.  Nailed to the cross with a dying saviour.  I would be lost in wonder and worship of Jesus at the thought that because of him my existence wasn't hopeless, damned.  Because of him I could be set free from darkness - from myself, from my flesh - and walk in light and be transformed into his holy way with lashings of theosis, repentance, and reliance of his strength.  I could look at Jesus, dying for me, and fall before him for taking the eternal punishment I justly deserved because of my sins.  I could look at Jesus and trust that he would lead me to eternal happiness.

I loved that line.  But now?  No.

Why not?  That's something for me to write about at some length in the following post.  I've split it in too because I find I typed about 1,800 words - which seems a bit much for anyone to read in one sitting.  It seems a bit much to think that anyone will have the patience or interest to read it at all.

I plan to visit the Cathedral tomorrow with a camera so some time soon there may be a blog post of only a few words and several pictures.  Hoorah!

A Psychotherapist, a Poem, Pythagoras, and a Publication

White Lodge went by several names.


It was known as The College of Psychotherapeutics.  White Lodge had several aims.  One was to help others become healed and live unfractured lives.  Another was to train others to help others become healed and live unfractured lives.  The ultimate purpose behind those aims at White Lodge was that they would work themselves out of their jobs, that those jobs would no longer be needed.

As part of the work of White Lodge, a little magazine journal was regularly published, The Psychotherapist.  I received that journal for several years but, as with everything else from that time, I destroyed them, threw them away or sold them in my Christian evangelical zeal.  The journal contained articles from the staff and students at White Lodge, poetry, stories.  Always an interesting read, if issues were still available as a bumper compilation volume or a digital file then I'd get hold of them.

I wrote poems.  I submitted a couple informally to The Pyschotherapist.  Very informally, as I probably had never been intending to submit them for anything.  And I think they both appeared in print.  The short one certainly did - a triolet.

I'd been taking an adult education writing class in the evenings - I'd had to get permission from the school headmaster to take the class because I wasn't an adult.  An entertaining class, we were set homework each week to write very different things in very different formats.  One week had had to write short poems - haiku, clerihews, triolets, and a longer poem, a sestina.

Until this moment I had forgotten the word sestina.  But I wrote one.  I have no idea what the 39 lines were about but seem to recall it had minor merit.  Perhaps this week I should write another.  It's a disciplined form.  Six stanzas of six lines followed by a three line envoi.  The words that end the lines of the first stanza also end the lines of the other five stanzas, but they are rotated to appear in different lines.  Lots of people have written sestinas.  Here's a link to one, The Guest Ellen at the Supper for Street People by David Ferry.  I'm a poetry ignoramus so hadn't heard of Ferry but am impressed by this poem.

The sestina is lost.  If it did turn up I'd probably be very embarrassed by it.  But I still remember one of the clerihews.

Pythagoras, Pythagoras,

You'll never quite catch up with us.

Most of your rules are out of date,

But your rule of the triangle still works great.

Very silly - but that's normal for clerihews.  Some are much more clever than mine - but I was only sixteen.  That's my excuse anyway!

And I still remember one of the triolets.  It's not exactly to the level of Thomas Hardy's triolet but, as I plead, I was sixteen.  And I'm not a poetic genius.  So this is the triolet that turned up in the pages of The Psychotherapist.  Since that time I have rarely written poems.  The only poetry I've tried this decade has been written in the last six months and is already on this blog.  And since that time I've certainly not been a published poet!

Why am I here?

I'd quite like to die.

If I did, people would cheer.

Why am I here?

Why won't people hear

When I talk and I cry?

Why am I here?

I'd quite like to die.

I knew depression.  I knew about feeling bad.  And a memory came out as I wrote.  By the time I wrote it for the class and then took it to White Lodge I was happier and did not want to die.  Later the school English teacher set us homework to write a suicide note.  We had such joyful school lessons!  Fortunately the teacher didn't turn out to be an evil cult leader, "Bring in your suicide letters children, and then we can enter into the spirit of things."  I began my note with that poem - and my note received an A+ grade.

My experiences of depression were awful.  Later experiences were worse.  But I can't claim it's all been worthless - they did at least give me good marks in an English lesson.

(This has been written without aim or plan and without any conscious memory of words like sestina)