It’s the end of the year, and as much as I would like to write back to every email I get from readers, I never do. If I did I would never get my own work done. BUT: I do get them, and I do read them, and I do love them. I wish, too, that I had answers for people: how to accept an emerging need to transition (in yourself or your loved one), how to be fair to a wife or husband who can’t accept that transition, how to tell children or other relatives; how to deal with employment and coming out to people and accepting whatever loss might come.
I don’t have those answers. I do know that transition is one of the most subtle and difficult things I have ever lived through. A good transition – which ours was – doesn’t have gigantic amounts of drama. Everything legal and medical has gone relatively smoothly. But everything changes; there is nothing in our lives that wasn’t effected by her transition.
So in a sense, that’s my advice to all of you who email: nothing will ever be the same, and you will be amazed at how entirely consuming and yet utterly boring a transition can be (if it goes well). If it doesn’t? Nothing will ever be the same then, either.
Thank you all for the emails – for telling me the books have been useful to you, or this blog, or some of the other various things I do and have done. It’s nice to feel appreciated. I’m just sorry I can’t pay everyone more personal attention, because so many of you need and deserve it, and there is so little out there for people living through this stuff. But do know that you aren’t alone. We do still run our online community forums, so do come there if you can.