Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed.
–Mary Oliver
It’s springtime in Seattle, and I went to the Quad at the University of Washington to visit the cherry blossoms, as I do every year. Standing alone amidst a crowd of people with cameras and cell phones documenting the beauty all around us and marking a singular moment in time where the trees are alive with color and the promise of an end to winter, I looked down to see my feet planted in the green grass. And I took a photo, because at that moment, I was there. I gathered the preciousness of standing in that place and planted it in my heart like an anchor, like a lighthouse beacon, like a promise to myself in any of the darkest moments of winter that spring would be coming, that I would be standing there to welcome and be welcomed by it.
I had the sense that just as I had come to gaze on the trees’ dazzling display of aliveness, they were similarly there witnessing me and mine. This was a tough winter for my brain and my body, and nuzzling my cheek against the impossible softness of fresh cherry petals, I sent back a promise to myself at the times where the cold darkness felt like it would last forever that I would stand here in the sun on this day.
This first day of spring marks a year of exploring hormone therapy. I have alluded to my nonbinary transition in various posts here, but it has largely remained a personal journey. Some of this was because I had yet to navigate how to tell my family. Additionally, I was (and to some extent, remain) uncertain how to hold the public nature of this space with the private nature of being my most authentic self and the professional nature of the work that I do. Ultimately, where I have landed is here: This is who I am. Making myself visible is an act as political as it is personal, as professional as it is private. I stand here with my feet firmly planted in the springtime, unashamed of my existence. The fact that I am here is no small miracle. If by putting my queer face and story out there, someone else feels less alone, my work is done. As Ram Dass says, we are all just walking each other home.
As I looked up from the space that my feet occupied on the grass to the cherry blossoms above my head, I remembered fragments of a poem that has spoken to deep places in my soul in the past. When I went home, I looked it up and cried.
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved youall your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.–Derek Wolcott, “Love after Love”
On the anniversary of my first injection of testosterone, and in keeping with my habit of writing letters to my past selves, I want to write specifically to the person I was a year ago, standing on the precipice of a major life transition, uncertain if the choice I was making would take me where I needed to go.
Dearest Rob,
You’ve had quite a year, love. You’ve traveled inner and outer landscapes and come home with beautiful stories to tell. You have stood guardian over many threshold crossings, and witnessed life and death again and again. It has not been easy. You’ve gotten really tired, and the winter was hard and cold and dark. But from where I stand now, I promise you that every single thing you’ve done to keep being here has been worth it.
Looking at photos of my (our!) face from this year’s outing to the cherry blossoms, I feel such a delicious tenderness. “You will love again the stranger who was your self.” What a profound gift it is to be coming alive in my own skin in new ways. What a challenging road it has been, and will continue to be. Holding the delightful moments close does not overshadow the reality of what a brutally cruel place this world can be, or of how exhausting it is to be misgendered multiple times a day, or of how painful rejection feels coming from people who once loved you. Sometimes “the stranger who was your self” feels impossible to love, and in those moments, I saw you commit to keeping your seat and continue to tend and nurture and cultivate the relationship you have with your self and your body, even if you do not love them very much right then. There is a bittersweet acceptance of the ebb and flow of self-love, and on the days where that gentleness is farther away, you have still reminded yourself to drink water, and eat food, and snuggle your cats, and take your meds, and move your body, and connect with people you love, and do creative things that make you feel alive. You still showed up for your work in the world, and you have kept your precious self as safe and well as you could. And because of your commitment to being alive in the world, I’m here. Alive. Well. In a place of joy and delight and curiosity and wonder.
I look with my slightly different face back at the photos from the cherry blossoms last year, taken just days before starting T, and I think of you and all of your questions, and all of the wondering about whether you were making the right choice or whether it would be worth it. “I don’t know what I’m doing!” you commonly worried. There isn’t a roadmap for nonbinary transition. You are out there, under the stars, following yourself home. And I can tell you, you know exactly what you’re doing. You are living your way into an answer for Mary Oliver’s question, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
I look back at you from a few months ago, in the depths of winter, and I know that spring is coming for you, even if you can’t remember what cherry blossoms caressing your cheek feel like. I know because I send that promise back in time to you like a lighthouse beacon radiating from my chest. I know that you will stand in this sunshine because I am here, and every step you took to tend to yourself led you to this place.
In this afternoon I’ve spent greeting myself arriving at my own door, I’ve had quite the opportunity to sit and feast on my life. What a joy to feel so full.
Thank you for taking such exquisite care of me, even when that seemed nearly impossible. I, in turn, will do the work and the magic of caring for you, and in this, create a life I can belong to and a body I can feel alive in for whatever time I get to be precisely where I am.
All my love and gratitude,
Rob
