Tattoos as gender affirming care

Something I have been wanting to do for  a long time, especially since I had my top surgery is to get my frogs covered. When I got these frogs, they were meaningful to me. The black frog came from the cover of a Ranger Rick magazine that I had carried around for years until I could afford to get it tattooed on. I went to a reputable shop, but the artist did a rather terrible job in rendering the frog including just leaving off several toes that were hidden behind a leaf  that he didn't include in the tattoo, and that I eventually tattooed on myself as best I could during my short tenure as a tattooist. According to Jamie Sams' Medicine Cards, "Frog sings the songs that bring the rains that cleanse the world" or "brings the tears that cleanse the soul."  I loved that message. I think I loved it more when I wasn't able to cry. It's not the message I want to carry over my heart anymore. These days I want my heart covered in protection, and in fierceness. 

The black frog is also a cover up of my first professional tattoo, a tattoo that happened to be a matching tattoo of the one my ex got. It being a rather dysfunctional relationship it felt important to cover it, and when I covered it, it felt like a tendril that had been connecting us was severed. Conversely, years later when we were on friendly terms I visited her and she hooked me up with her tattooist friend who did the other frog.

I had a consult scheduled today about finally getting these tattoos covered. I was filled with joy at the prospect of the coverup, and what I realized is that covering them up is a part of my gender-affirming care. Yes, the images no longer fit where I am, but also the placement and size were all about working around breasts. These are remnants  of chest that no longer serves me. In so many ways these tattoos no longer fit me. I am long past ready for them to be gone.

Unfortunately, I learned at my consultation what I had feared: they will need laser treatment to be adequately covered. Yeah, I could try another artist, but I've done the cover up thing before, and I have old tattoos poking out from the sides, or under. My chest is important to me, and I need to do it write. So, I'm disappointed. I felt like I was almost at the finish line, but now I have to run another race before I get back on track, but I know in the long run I will be happier if I go through the laser process first. Anyone know how I go about making money by selling pictures of my feet or some other low effort means of making extra cash?

 

Did I make a difference?

I know a lot of us are feeling hopeless, and/or helpless. Many of us look at the activism work we did over the years, and see where things are now and think, "Did anything I did make a difference?" I want to assure you that, yes, it did. Yes we've gone backwards in many respects as homophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, transphobia, etc rear their ugly heads like a fecking hydra. Yes, things are bad, there's no sugar coating that. AND, the work you did DID make a difference. Whether that work was sit-ins at the lunch counters in the 60's, volunteering with AIDS patients in the 80s, starting as GSA at your school in the 90s (as I did), or just being a kind human to someone who needed to know that someone out their was "safe." All of these things made a difference, and the world would be a much more dangerous place for marginalized people if the work that was done hadn't been done. 

Yes, my right to be legally married is now in question, but I never thought I would see gay marriage become legalized in this country, and yet for 10 years my marriage has been recognized. I KNOW what is possible, and if we lose it we will fight for it again because we know what is possible. Even though the GSA I started in 95 collapsed after I left DSU I know I laid a foundation, I know I planted seeds, I know that the work I did made it just a little bit easier for the kids who came after me. I know that me being out has helped others to come out to their families and friends, and that me being out has helped parents to be more accepting of their own queer kids.

Sometimes I think it's easy to forget how impactful the "little" things can be. Saving a life isn't always jumping in front of a bullet, most often it is those little moments- a smile, a kind word, your undivided attention. Many people have saved my life over the years. Mrs. Fuller when she took me aside and told me, "I don't think anyone has ever told you how bright you are." That one conversation turned my hatred of school into a love of learning, and learning is what got me the fuck out of ND. Mrs. Anderson who took seriously something I'd written in my creative writing journal, and told me that she couldn't bear losing another student. My friend Debi who was just THERE during one of the worst periods of my life-I wasn't able to really talk about it/process it with her, but having her solid presence there grounded me as I was tossed about in my sea of chaos. It is not an exaggeration to say each of these people saved a life, my life.

Thinking about the more global sense of "making a difference",  I think back to something Jane Goodall said during the pandemic: (paraphrasing) it's easy to get overwhelmed and feel helpless and hopeless with all of the bad going on in the world, and we as individuals can't fix those big things, but what we can do is look to our own microcosms, our own communities and find ways to get involved and make a difference for the people (even one person) around us. And in doing so, we do change the world for the better.

As SNAP cuts loomed on the horizon I saw multiple restaurants in my community posting that they would feed kids, I saw people on social media asking where best to donate food, I saw community organizing. If people didn't have money to spare, they compiled lists of places to go for help. 

We can all make a difference. We can all change the world. Little acts every day- dropping a quarter in an expired meter, letting a friend know how much they mean to you, buying something off of  a giving tree, volunteering at Meals on Wheels, speaking up when you hear bigotry, holding the door for someone whose hands are full, donating your old coats to Transgender Resource Center. You can make a difference, and you ARE important.

Resiliency (TW discussion of suicidal ideation)

 

This weekend I was at a Women's Retreat on Resiliency.

One of the takeaways that I had was that I went into the retreat thinking that I had no resilience. I think about all the shit that my grandmother went through, and yet she was (to my young eyes) solid as a rock. She was the one person in my family who made me feel truly loved, and cared about. And I see myself; "dependent" on therapy to function, battling life-long struggles with anxiety and depression...and my many struggles with suicidal thoughts.

In one of the activities we were to share with a partner about a time we did NOT feel resilient. I was sharing about a period on time in 1991 where I'd experienced several losses, and traumas in a short period of time, and one night when my roommates were away the weight of it all crushed me. And it wasn't just the events of those few months, but the accumulation of unresolved trauma from my childhood. With the weight of all of that I had started sobbing with all of the grief (and I was not a crier...I cried at my dad's viewing and funeral that September, and I was DONE! Cowboys don't cry after all, right?), and I went into my gun cabinet, got my dad's .357, crawled under the table and put the cocked gun to my temple. As I told my partner in the retreat of the moment a tiny spark of hope said to me "what if tomorrow is better" and I put the gun down, it occurred to me that perhaps THAT was resilience. In that moment where I felt there was no hope for things to ever get better, for me to ever feel better, maybe, just maybe I could hang of for one more day.

And I've been thinking that maybe instead of all the times I have been at those crossroads where I was ready to close this show being examples of me not being resilient, perhaps the fact that each of those times I chose to cling to hope, I tried to reach out for community or support are examples of me being resilient. 

I recently shared with a friend who was going through some shit about what my couples therapist had said about letting the relationship hold the hard stuff. One person can't hold the huge shit, but when we share the load it's manageable. In the retreat it occurred to me that letting others help me hold the load, ore even letting them hold me up doesn't mean that I'm not resilient, it means that I'm resilient enough to know when to ask for help. Maybe?

Anyway, one of the other activities was to write a blessing to ourselves when we most needed it. Here is mine:

Holy One,

May you find your Power and your Voice,

May you know Love,

May you know the Divine, and see the Web of Life with Clear Vision.

May you know Joy and Peace,

May you know your purpose and live it fully,

May you embrace your gifts and your worth,

May you share your gifts with the world with an unwaveringly open Heart.

May you heal your own Heart, in healing the world.

May you find peace in your body.
May the hurts and wounds that struck so deep be healed, and may your 

    Spirit be at peace.

May you be surrounded with protectors, and those who know your worth,

May you be surrounded with love always.

May you live authentically knowing that you are enough.

May you live joyfully knowing that you loved.
May you live courageously knowing that you are safe.
May you live mindfully knowing that you are resilient.