"Standing Together"

by

Jaime Ray

Hello from Martinez, CA. Martinez is a lovely city small and quaint, just East of San Francisco and the whole Bay Area, along the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers that join together and flow into the bay. All of the Bay Area is within an hour from my home. I like living here but it's rather expensive. I have lived here most of my life. The home I now live in belongs to a friend and her family. We met through a church that I was invited to about a year ago. Going to that Church for the first time was a frightening experience. Yet when I arrived, there were many people there who through their behavior allowed me just to be, and I felt pretty much like a normal visitor.

::giggles::

(Thinking of just how "Un-normal" she is.)

Following that first service, I met an older couple that was so kind to invite me to their home in Moraga where Dan (my Son) and I traveled to share an evening together with our hosts, including diner and a comfortable time to socialize. Again, I was on edge, like so many times since my transition between the genders, I remain a bit leery of strangers. I would even say that in some instances, that feeling has escalated to sheer terror.

These first visits to the Church and the family who was kind to me grew to include their daughter and her family and that is how I found my current home. I learned later that they had recognized me from an article that had been printed in our local newspaper. Many people were interested in what it was like for a child to be raised by a transsexual father/mother.

My life has found it's way to being much more settled just in the last six months. Prior to this season, I was living the life of a busy and struggling transsexual. I praise GOD that I am now on the other side of all of this. I can now begin to let go of those chapters of my life. How many years have I spent processing the sometimes-agonizing daily agenda which so many like me have had to become acquainted? Part extraordinary adventure lined with miles of miracles, and part nightmare shadows of daily persecution, I found my way, as I believe many of you will also. Not everyone of coarse will travel this path that I have walked, but some will. Thank you for allowing me to write to each of you and share about my life and my little family.

Dan mentioned in the paragraphs above is my 17-year-old Son. He is attending a boarding school back East. Now I have to adjust to having my son whom I raised on my own, living three thousand miles from our home. It's been a mix of emotions. I was just beginning to settle in my new role as his "Other Mom." I have been fortunate to have been given a relationship with him that in every way possible reflects a mother / son relationship. When he began to attend the boarding school, I told my friends, I thought I would have two more years to prepare! I was going to get myself a therapist and process the classic empty nest syndrome. Now I have two weeks to let go of him. Let go of him was what I felt led to do at that time, and so I did. It was not easy.

Dan and I have been through many trials together. In the eighth grade, and all beginning with my influences, he became the focus of some intense hatred and ritual harassment by some other children who attended the public school with him. Over the months that he took on the pointed projections, I watched as my charming blond headed little one grew into a quiet and withdrawn blue eyed, fair skinned observer. Walled in from the many offensive factors in his preteen life, he would keep a short leash for himself and rarely ventured outside our home and the comforts found in our relationship to each other. We both learned how to field the harassments, together we walked down the street to the shopping center, or across a parking lot into a bank or grocery store both feeling the stares and hearing the hurtful comments.

My son was and is the single most important person to me in this entire world. He and I have grown through a collection of life's experience that includes living out of a travel trailer and bouncing from community to community while I attempted to remain gainfully employed. All through these trials, he believed in me, he stood with me. All through these experiences that pounded our hearts and emotions, I fought to protect him and shelter him from the harsh reactions and subtle rejections of a community fearfully ignorant of the issues that were obvious for all to see as we passed through the local society.

Like the other mom's hopeful to play a meaningful role in the lives of their children, I too wanted to take up what I had been given and with great pride participate in my son's progress as he developed. With the help of my counselor, I was growing through my personal plague of false shame and guilt. While I was not working, and when local employers were unknowingly joining forces and excluding our family from being able to participate in the economy or a chance to receive the desperately needed rewards for our many offers to contribute, I began to wonder how I could make the most of this free time between interviews and the ongoing job search.

I turned away the shadow of a haunting and lingering voice always penetrating but never welcome which said to me, "Your not worth the investment, so no employer in his right mind would want to hire you." "You're an embarrassment to the employers you court, what do you expect of them, to stick out their necks just because your needy and showing up at their doorway for a job?" "What about their businesses?" "Can you imagine the impact you would have on their clientele?" Hidden within these statements, all present at various times through those difficult years, were many half truths and a lot of deception, both for me and I am for sure the many employers I had approached.

Shame is an ocean across which we sail as we fight to take possession of all that we have been given. We are worth employment, an assignment, those of us willing to work an honest day. We are able to create and give back to the world in spite of our many needs. We are no different in this way than all the others in the unemployment lines. Yet, I was truly different in my appearance and approaches to an age old conflict. Not different than you perhaps, but different than the crowd.

While I was "off duty" among the line up of other unemployed hopefuls, I thought of how I could participate and continue in my Son's life as a mother should, in spite of my failure to go forward as a provider. Of coarse all of this was according to my personal vision of myself as Dan's mother. Believe me, I was a single mom with a vision! I will be the first to admit, I am selfish when it comes to being a mother. I wanted and continue to desire to enjoy the relationship every bit as much as I want my Son to.

During that time when my Son entered the eighth grade, I was asked to accompany him to open registration and to sign the necessary paperwork that would register him in his classes. Dan shrank by my side as we moved through the crowded outdoor mall outlined with many folding tables, each representing the stations through which the students and parents were all to be corralled. I too, just as my Son was shackled with my own fears that day. But Dan looked up to me as an example of how to handle the many challenges that we were presented along the way. This day was no different and so I walked. I walked as tall as I could while the other parents and students all around us slowed up to catch a glimpse of the odd family.

::sigh::

Do I like being odd? Well some of you probably do. I know for a while it was a kick to be different. Sometimes it still is, as long as it is for a righteous reason. But then there are those times when like the family movies often depict; we just wanted to be like the others, to fit in. I wanted to express my womanhood through my role as Dan's mother and Dan, I am certain just wanted to be another cool kid on the block, someone popular and be able to make the friends that would support him through his life at that time. Each of us present there that day was in possession of a life dream. We walked away from that day safe, with only a few emotional bruises from the comments they thought we couldn't hear or the stares that penetrated our sense of space and personal dignity.

I had impulsively volunteered to serve when asked by a fellow adult representative at one of the tables, but before she had a chance to read me. I guess true to my own wishes, I just wanted to ignore the mouth hanging open and to just do what I dreamed of regardless. I didn't stop to think of all the consequences that this might present later. Who wants to sit and pick apart every move one makes to try and avoid conflict from un-accepting others? Certainly I didn't want to future trip at that moment. Since then, I have slowed up and taken more time to calculate my effect on my child's life. Who is to say what was right then or now?

The Halloween or Fall dance was just around the corner and a few weeks after the first semester had begun, I received a call to fulfill a responsibility as a chaperone for the dance. Although the activity was not my favorite, I gladly accepted even before I sat with Dan and finally did discuss the many possible ramifications. He decided he didn't want to attend the dance. I felt disappointment and then guilt. He said he wouldn't have gone anyway which I believe was the truth given his withdrawal in general. He was growing more and more distant from his peers and any invitation to join in with the other kids. I had watched as he displayed what was to me a peculiar taste in his choice of friends. He himself was as straight laced as any normal Christian boy at the age of 13. He had attended a private Christian grade school for the first five years, K-5th. He was not a gutter punk or a gang member. Dan was and is a sensitive young man able and willing to serve in the community and with his friends and loved ones. What a waste I often thought. I grew angry, then angrier still! How was this going to play out? What could I do, give in and walk away attempting to be the one who was withdrawn? Again I was the boy's role model. Dan's watchful eye never veered away from me as we moved forward with our lives. I kept thinking selfishly, this was my only chance and I didn't want to give it up because of how others felt, behaved or threatened. Many people told me I was insane to attempt to raise him on my own. Some told me I was very selfish to drag him through this with me. I felt a ton of grief thinking they might have been right. I had many long dialogues with Jesus where I attempted to write out what I thought He might say to me if He was as I was taught, right by my side.

j- Father, what can I do at this point? I love my Son and You know that I want to live out my own life, to fulfill my role as mother? How can I possibly find a way to make this work without harming my most loved one?

J- I love you, Jaime, you and Dan are very dear to me. It is unfortunate that the two of you are ridiculed and tested every step of the way. Child, you must first take my hand and I must lead you through much of this so that you can make informed choices about how you will lead the rest of your life and lead your own child. There can be no avoiding the facts about how people are and how you and Dan will be effected.

j- I love you,too, Father, and I want to please you. How is it that any of this could possibly be pleasing to you my Lord?

J- I am sure that for you, this would be difficult to understand. I am the one who created the character traits of courage and honesty. I made man so that I could embody those traits in a living breathing being. It gives me pleasure to see someone like myself struggling to uphold, that which is right. Your courage does please me, Jaime. Your Son whom you have raised so fair and so bright. He is sensitive to his parent. He wants to please you as you wish to please me. Yes children, both of you bring me a large helping of pleasures. Now I must nurture my loved ones. Listen as I tell you what I have for you.

You are to be mine! I will deliver you. I know that probably sounds like a sermon you heard somewhere, but it's very true. I will build in you a fortress of Faith. You shall be a shinning example of my many abilities, all of this and more because you were willing to surrender to the truth. Sure many are mocking you, they mocked me Jaime. Sure many will not allow you your place in my sanctuary, they didn't allow me at times and in some cases, still don't.

Yet you have placed one foot in front of the other and keep up your pace for me. For this I will return more faith than you can yet understand. Please do not wait long to return to me, Jaime. Please dwell in my Spirit and among those who also follow me. Yes, I know that this is difficult for you. Walk through each day knowing that I am truly with you and it is my hand that leads your smaller hand.

You are dear to me child. I value your gender identity, I am the one who created it. I am He who will restore you before their eyes! Your gender is equipped the way I wanted it to be. You are a strong one little child, strong in your willing spirit. Come now and sit in my lap. Here we go…

j- Thank you for sharing now, Father, here before the others who look over your shoulder at us. I am happy for them that they too are welcome here in your presence.

J- Yes, I am aware of them as they read about our relationship. I want them also not to wait long before they sit still with me as we are doing now and listen to my love and care. There is room here. There is room for you here in my lap, now come.

Thank you for your patience in listening to my dialogue with Christ. I thought it would be better to write it out like that rather than simply to tell you about it. This is the relationship with our Father that carried me. I want you, too, to share in this intimacy. This was how I dealt with the issues facing Dan and I. Is this story one that touches your heart as well?

I did finally decide to go to that dance. The children mocked me, the parents told me lies about how they had talked to the vice principal and were having me removed. At one point the local police stood beside me, and that was when I was freed from their harassments.

I fulfilled my responsibility and served as a mother, as a parent with what dignity I had. I went home in tears. I cried out my pain again and again to Jesus like I have modeled above. Dan went on to take the heat as a result of my further exposure before his peers and the local community. He was harassed for many months. Other boys threw urine soaked towels over the stall at him in the bathrooms. They smashed his project in metal shop. They hurled insults at him along with small metal objects when he passed between classes in the hallway. This happened to my Son in my absence. This was my beloved child. All of this was driving me mad.

I am taken back to those days when his small hand in mine, we would walk over the cliffs and descend upon the beaches along the coast near where we have lived through the years. He followed me then and he still follows me now. I thank GOD for this.

Dan eventually became the victim of a violent crime and as a result, was lying there in the hospital bed. Imagine how I felt as I stood next to him watching as he passed in and out of consciousness. When he attempted to sit or stand, he would vomit and have to quickly lie down again. This is my baby we are talking about here!

Daniel is the one pictured in my arms when I received him into this world. I stayed up all night that first night carrying him over to the sink in that small room in the maternity ward. I held his tiny head in my hand and I performed my own private Baptism at the sink in our room. I just wanted a moment with our Savior to thank Him for this bundle of love. I wanted to dedicate my child to the King of Kings. So I did.

Both Dan and I are recovering from the long and dramatic passage we have each endured. Sometimes alone and sometimes together, there were many more stories like this one above. I was asked to share about my family and about The Faith. So I have tried to share from my heart. I am a Christian and a woman. Now I am female. I am a mother and a servant. I am a friend and a loved one. I open my life here so that hopefully you to will be encouraged and see that which is in all of us who believe on Christ, if we will be still and listen to the truth.

Thank you for hearing me, forgive me for my scattered thoughts. I am learning more about writing them out, and am currently working on a fictional novel. Hopefully I will complete the project soon. Writing is a way of freeing my soul from the oppression remaining in my mind. I want to share and I want to give, this is what I am created to do. I want there to be a record for my Son to one day reflect upon.

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