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Thailand: Hotel Recovery
We pulled up to the hotel, and hotel staff were actually waiting outside for me with a wheelchair. I got out of the car, threw my donut on to the wheelchair, and sat down and they wheeled me into the hotel and up to my room on the third floor. I was so thankful that I did not have to walk anymore. I got to my room and got my clothes off and crawled into bed.
The hotel portion of my recovery hasn’t been much different than the hospital portion except, I have less TV channels to access and I have a little more variety in the food that I choose to eat. Back at the hotel, my diet could change to soft and semi liquid foods, so while I could eat the full contents of a bowl of soup now, I was also able to eat more soft foods like scrambled eggs. Having access to things like soda makes this portion of the recovery much easier.
I spent a lot of time sleeping, and waking up long enough to eat and take medicine and maybe watch some TV, before falling back to sleep. My body has been very tired. Even when I do very little, I am exhausted like I have run a marathon.
This routine lasted for a couple of days and then the nurses came in and changed up the game. They removed all my bandaging and cleaned everything up and then simply taped the catheter back down. I was finally bandage free, even though I still had some tape and my catheter on me. This was a huge mental step because, from my perspective, I could finally visualize the results of everything I had gone through. Things were looking up.
I only have a few more days and then they will come and take the packing out. Once they do that, I can probably take a shower, as well as begin the arduous task of dilating. But for now, I will leave you knowing that all I’m doing is laying around, watching TV, eating and sleeping. It’s a pretty boring life.
Thailand: Hospital Recovery
I finally woke up and it felt like somebody had grabbed my crotch and ripped everything off. Of course we know that’s exactly what happened. I was just very thankful for a spinal epidural and a lot of drugs. I looked down, but I was unable to see anything because it looked like I was wearing the world’s largest Depends.
The nurses came in and brought me some breakfast and medicine. My breakfast consisted of a cup of warm soy milk and a cup of hot chocolate. After breakfast, one of the nurses came back in and gave me a sponge bath, which was interesting to say the least, because I’d never had one in my entire life. I have to admit that it felt good to actually feel a little bit clean.
After they were gone, I turned on the TV and had a satellite dish worth of channels to peruse, including quite a few American channels, even though they were Asia bound. Eventually I fell asleep, until lunch time. Once again I was awakened by the nurses so that I could take my medicine and enjoy another liquid based meal. After that, I laid in bed, surfing the internet, and watching TV until I eventually fell asleep.
My friend came to visit me for a little bit, the first day of recovery, which was nice, because I could interact with another person who could understand me. Of course she had to leave because the visitation window was very small and I eventually fell back to sleep, that’s what powerful pain medication does to you. I was awakened later so that I could take more medicine and drink more liquid meals. After a while, I remember the nurse coming in and turning the TV off, but I was in such a groggy state that I did not really care, and welcomed the darkness and the silence so that I could just lay there and drift off into dreamland. I had survived my first day of recovery.
So the cycle continued pretty much the same for 3 more days but that last day was a doozy. On the evening of the third day of recovery in the hospital, the doctor came in, after he had completed 7 hours of surgery on somebody else, and wanted to remove all my bandages so that he could take a look at all my incisions and make sure that everything was healing properly. The nurses turned all the lights on and began working feverishly removing tape and bandages from my pelvic area.
It was nice to not have all that bandaging and packing on the top of me, and be able to have a little more flexibility in movement, but it also brought into light a very surreal moment where I got to see myself for the first time (at least what I could from my perspective). Of course I could also see the catheter tube as well as two fluid tubes going directly into my mons pubis. That was actually kind of gross and unnerving.
The doctor did his inspection and the nurses thought it would be a good idea to check the sensitivity of my clitoris. I nearly came off the bed when they touched it. They were very pleased that sensitivity had remained and that everything should heal nicely and work properly. They cleaned me up and put less bandaging on me, enough to protect the catheter and fluid tubes, and said that everything (except the catheter) would get removed and cleaned up tomorrow before they sent me back to the hotel. They left me to be, and I fell asleep.
Morning came and I was awakened to another sponge bath. I did not feel like eating much so they gave me a warm hot chocolate and some potato crackers. After I was cleaned up, the nurses came in and began removing all the bandaging and cleaning up my pelvic area, to prepare to remove the fluid tubes, and get me ready to leave and go back to the hotel. They cut the fluid tubes and then began to disinfect the area around them and slowly removed the tubes. It hurt like hell. They got both of them out, and bandaged them up, and then put tape over all the bandaging to keep everything in place. At that point I was completely disconnected from anything and could get up out of the bed.
They helped me get dressed and gathered all my things up for me. I was then escorted outside the surgery center and I walked over to the front seat of the driver’s car. I got in and sat down on my little donut. The ride back to the hotel at 6:30 in the morning was bumpy, painful, and seemed to be the longest 10 minutes of my life. However, I arrived safely at the hotel, ready to continue the rest of my recovery there.
Thailand: Surgery Day
Since I’ve been recovering, i haven’t been in a position or had the feeling to write. I’m sure you can forgive me. I will bring my readers up to speed with a 4 part piece inside of the larger series that highlights my surgery and immediate recovery. Enjoy.
Well today’s the day. I woke up and of course could not have anything for breakfast today, not even liquids, so I went downstairs with my friend and watched her eat while we sat and chatted.
After breakfast we came upstairs and I finished off some writing that I wanted to do, as well as paid some bills that were going to be due over the next week. I then took a shower to get myself completely shaved and clean, knowing I wasn’t going to be able to shower and shave for at least a week, and then packed a small bag for the hospital.
The time came to leave, 12:55 pm local time, so we went downstairs and waited for the driver to arrive. He came and my friend and I got in the car and headed to the surgery center. We arrived at the surgery center in about 10 to 15 minutes and I was sure there would be some kind of wait because I have never gone to a hospital and not waited.
Unfortunately, there was absolutely no wait. They were waiting for me with the door open, ready to walk in and begin my adventure. My friend and I were in the door for less than a minute before they grabbed me and took me up to my recovery room. They did not allow my friend to stay very long and ushered her out the door and into a cab so she could go back to the hotel.
I was escorted to a small dressing room first, where they gave me a very nice plush robe to put on and I put my clothes into my bag. I was then shown to my recovery room where I was promptly told to get into the bed and they began taking vitals. After that I was told to rest and wait until the anesthesiologist arrived. The nurse turned on the TV to HBO where an episode of Parkland was on showing a bunch of doctors surrounding a guy, in the O.R., trying to resuscitate him. He did not make it. Let me tell you that was such a reassuring image at that moment (rolls eyes expectedly).
After a few minutes, the doctor came in and told me it would be at least another 1.5 to 2 hours before the anesthesiologist showed up. Yeesh. Why was I here so early? I switched channels to Food Network and began to relax…and drool. Maybe not the best channel but hey, I like to cook.
About 45 minutes later the nurses came in and said it was time to go into surgery. Imagine my surprise. They had me get out of the bed and walk down the hall to the O.R. where I was told to climb up onto the operating table. The anesthesiologist introduced himself and said he was going to start preparing me for surgery and to just relax and be calm. He inserted the I.V. into my arm and taped it down and told me that I would begin to feel warm and fuzzy. He was right, it felt like instant drunkenness. I don’t remember anything after that.
I was lightly slapped awake around 10 or 11 pm. I can’t be sure because I couldn’t see too well but the hands were somewhere in that quadrant of the clock. I was told that the surgery had gone well and that I was recovering nicely and that I would need to sleep through the night and they would take me to my permanent room in the morning. I went back to sleep.
I was awaken the next morning around 5:30 am when the nurses were taking vitals and messing around with the massagers that were wrapped around my legs. I noticed that my nurse had been laying on a pallet on the floor next to my bed. I asked her if she slept there all night and she said yes. Talk about service. I was then told that it was time to go to my permanent room.
I was sure they were just going to unlock the bed and roll me into my permanent room, but that was not the case. Instead, they helped me get up and out of the bed, very slowly, and proceeded to help me walk out the door and down the hall to the top of the stairs. When I got to the top of the stairs, there were 3 nurses assisting me, step by step, all the way down a flight of stairs. My legs felt like jelly. When I got to the bottom, they plopped me into a rolling desk chair and rolled me into my permanent room. I immediately climbed into my bed and proceeded to sleep while they did their work.
Happy Independence Day
Happy 4th of July.
A holiday we celebrate in America as a result of our defiance to oppression that says you are not free to be who you are, but to be who we tell you to be. Our country was built on the epitome of being free to be, no matter what that may be. This is my 2nd Independence day as my true self, out to the world. Like the last one, this one has a significance that is, in my opinion, greater than the last.
Last 4th of July, I was newly out to the world as a transgender person, a transsexual person. I had some push back from some people but for the most part, 95% of the people in my life did not push back and a smaller majority even congratulated me and called me brave and bold to be so authentic in a world where we are shamed if we are different to any degree, much more when it falls in the camp of a binary like a man or woman.
This 4th of July is different because I have gained a new independence. I am now free from the dysphoria that my body has laid upon me for almost 40 years. When I started hormone replacement therapy in April of 2014, I became free from the mental dysphoria I lived in. No longer did my brain live in a cloud of depression and anxiety caused merely from using the wrong gas in the engine of my body. My brain began to function with the right hormones, and with it came a new way to live life, alive, wide awake, capable of being, feeling, and sensing like what I believe 99.5% of the world does.
In the 2nd half of 2014, I began to chip away at my social dysphoria. My ability to get the world to see me like I see myself, to be me authentically in their presence was another layer of the dysphoria onion I was living in. I was now beginning to live my life full time as the new me, not pretending to be someone else or something else that didn’t quite fit me right. This culminated with my final social step of changing my name and gender markers on all my legal documents and social networks. I was officially Ashley Nikole at that point.
Today, I awoke from a surgery that lasted approximately 6 hours, to find that the last hold out on my body dysphoria had been changed and now begins my independence to live 100% authentically, as a physical woman with everyone in my life. My friends, my family, my future relationships, would now see me as I see me. Today is indeed a great day to be free.
So for now, for today, I will rest. I will physically rest and recover. I will mentally rest while I sit and contemplate the vastness this great freedom has bestowed upon me, while I thank my Lord for the promise He made, and thusly delivered on, to give me everything I would need to transform me like the potter reshapes the clay to form a new vessel. I will also rest from my social life, simply slipping back into the shadows and out of the spotlight, until I’m ready to once again emerge and wrestle the task of showing others the love that was poured onto me by my Savior and Maker.
God bless and Happy Independence Day.
Thailand: Day 3
Another day and of course no eating still. At least I can drink. I got up at 5:30 am because my body said so and sat around surfing the net and writing during that time. After my friend got up, we got ready and headed down so she could eat breakfast. Of course I drank my weight in coffee and apple juice and we chatted a lot. I love just sitting and talking with her, learning so much from an elder, not only in age, but in her experience as a 20+ year transitioned transwoman.
When we came back to the room, I had to commence probably the worst part of my cleansing. Swiff. I’ll leave it to you to google it, but I had to take 45cc of Swiff with soda or juice and that is the nastiest thing I’ve ever tasted. It wasn’t as gagging as some fiber drinks, but the flavor is terrible and keeps you gagging long after it’s gone down.
I sat around the room surfing the net, catching up with friends, and waiting to see how my body would react to the Swiff. It didn’t react well. Actually, it reacted exactly the way it’s supposed to. Needless to say I spent a long amount of time in a specific room of the hotel letting nature take it’s course.
Around 11:30 am, I felt confident that I could spend a little time by the pool reading, so I tossed on some better clothes for sitting out in 95 degree weather and headed down to the pool. Made a pitstop to another bathroom (geesh this is going to get old) and then walked to the pool. Went through the doors to the outside, yep, it was hot outside.
The pool was a beautiful collection of trees, water features, exposed aggregate decking, nice outdoor tile, and wonderfully comfortable lounge chairs with umbrellas. I was greeted by hotel staff who did the common bowing greeting and handed me a towel as I entered the pool area. I found a good chair under a big umbrella and settled down with my tablet, electrolyte water, and towel and continued to read the 2nd book of the Harry Dresden files.
I was able to sit there for a good hour reading until nature called again, so I took care of that and tried to come back and read more but after just 1 chapter I was getting hot so I decided to head back upstairs and relax more. I got upstairs and took care of some computer stuff and then hopped in the shower while my friend went over to the mall.
When she came back from the mall, she brought me some more of that delicious soup I had eaten the day before and I took that as well as another dose of Swiff. I spent another large chunk of time in that same little room as before and eventually I was just too tired to keep at it so I laid down. I must have fallen asleep because I woke up 2 hours later realizing it was a lot darker around.
I got up for a bit, but mostly just chatted with people who were just starting their day back home. At this point I am in need of more sleep as my circadian rhythm hasn’t quite locked up with the Thai people, but I’m getting close. So I will close out this day by saying goodnight (or good morning for my American friends). Tomorrow is a big day for me and I must be rested. So until next time…
Thailand: Day 2
Well today was just the most normal day a girl could have. Sort of.
I woke up at 7 am after going to bed at 2:30 am. My body wasn’t tired anymore so it kept me awake. Turns out when you get very little sleep, you get tired earlier. Bed time is coming shortly for sure. But today was pretty normal and more like a vacation than anything else.
After waking up, I sat around while my friend got ready and then we both headed down to breakfast at the buffet. Of course, once again, this was torture. Today however I had 4 cups of coffee and probably 4 cups of apple juice. I did try some pandanus juice, thinking it would be sweet, after all it’s juice. Yeah not so much. It looked like liquid green apple jolly rancher, but it tasted like liquid pretzels. Not expected nor appetizing at all.
After breakfast we came back to the room and sat around for a couple of hours just resting and relaxing. I played Angry Birds while my friend rested her legs. After a short rest, we got up and decided to head to the mall next door to see if there was anything good, but specifically if they had the few items I needed to pick up.
The mall was called Seacon Square and is one of the largest, if not the largest, mall in Bangkok. This thing was huge and was only rivaled by the Mall of America in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The mall had 4 levels and covered more than 1/4 of a mile in length. 5.4 million square feet of retail space. Needless to say, they had everything I needed.
We entered the mall and got my friend a SIM card for her phone. It only took 3 stores to finally get what we needed and at least 30 minutes of trying to figure out how to activate everything and get it working. They got it working and it was fun doing it through broken english and Google Translate. Then it was time for food.
The food court in this mall was AMAZING! There was all kinds of cuisine and it all smelled so good. Too bad I couldn’t eat any of it. I did finally find a place that served soup and ordered up what appeared to be a Thai pork and matzo ball soup (I know, ironic right?). It was a chicken broth based soup so I just spooned up the broth until only the other stuff was left and my friend proceeded to eat the non-broth stuff. She said it was good. It smelled good so I trusted her. That whole big bowl of soup cost me 50 baht, which is less than $2. We both ate lunch on less than $2.
So we made the rounds to some different shops and found everything I needed to get. By then it was 4:30 pm and we headed back to the hotel. Traffic made crossing the street fun but we made it back and came to the room and slowed down. I had to take some medicine as part of my cleansing. At 6 pm, we decided to eat dinner. My friend just wanted a simple tuna fish sandwich and I was on the hunt for any kind of soup that wasn’t chicken broth. She hit the deli and I went to the little Chinese restaurant in the hotel. She got her sandwich with fries and I got szechwan hot & sour soup. We came back to the room and began to eat. OMG was that soup good. I wanted to eat all the good stuff in it, but stuck to the broth only. I will definitely go back.
A little more time of resting and surfing the net and I did another part of the cleansing ritual. I’ll spare the details but be assured it involved water and a little bulb thingy to squirt the water out. I’ll let you do the math. After that, I changed into my pajamas and waited until 9:15 pm where I received a call from Nashville from a prospective employer for an interview with a company doing front end development. Hopefully they’re interested in pursuing talks or making an offer. Time will tell.
Shortly after the interview my head hit the pillow and I was out like a light. Hopefully this jet lag junk is coming to a close and I’ll get back on a regular sleeping schedule.
Thailand: Day 1
So today I had my first full day in Thailand. It was very uneventful…well, sort of.
Just to recap, I landed in Bangkok on the evening of June 29 and it took a couple of hours to get money changed, get through immigration, get my luggage, a new SIM card for my phone, find my driver and have him get me to the hotel and get checked in and in my room. Then I had to call my family and let them know I was good. At least the bonus of being on the other side of the planet is that I could call them at midnight because it was noon at home. At that point I tried to sleep but it was 2:30a before I finally went down.
Woke up this morning at 7:30a and got ready for the day and headed down to breakfast. Talk about torture. The spread of food options would rival a Las Vegas casino buffet and that was the problem. I couldn’t eat any of it. I have to stick to clear liquids, juice, soda, kool-aids, coffee (no milk), and tea. So heartbreaking but I will enjoy that food in the weeks to come. So I had a couple of glasses of apple juice and then headed up to the lobby.
In the lobby, the driver that is provided by the surgery center was waiting for me and we went out to the car and got in and headed to the surgery center. The surgery center is only 2 miles away, but it took us 20 minutes to get there because of all the traffic. I’d also like to note that in Thailand, you just don’t drive a big car. By big, I mean the Toyota Camry we were in. The roads are so narrow and when two big cars try to pass each other on a side street, you’re practically brushing side mirrors to do so.
So I arrived at the surgery center and they made sure all information was in order as well as paying the balance of my surgery that remained after the wire transfer I sent just wasn’t quite enough (int’l exchange fees and wire fees ate some of it). So I paid the 189 baht (about $5) and that settled everything up. I signed a few more documents and they took my vitals to update my records. I then waited until it was time to see the surgeon and headed to the exam room.
When I arrived in the exam room, I was surprised the surgeon was already there. Quite a difference from America where the doctor makes you wait for him in the exam room. We sat and talked about the surgery, what it will entail, how things will work and what needed to be done for preparation. He spoke english well so communication was not a problem at all.
After all the talking, he then asked me undress so he could review the area in which he would be working and could make sure that I would have enough “material” for him to do a great job. This is where it gets slightly awkward and amusing all at the same time. No matter how many times I do it, whether for my doctor or this surgeon, standing in an exam room, with my pants around my ankles and my shirt pulled up to my boobs, with a full face of makeup and my hair done, having a doctor grab my genitals and examine them is just never a comfortable moment. Ever. It amplifies my dysphoria and reminds me 100x over why I’m doing this.
The amusing part comes in his need to take pictures for my file (before and after). I never thought I’d be in a foreign country with my pants around my ankles allowing someone to take pictures of my genitals. I never thought I’d actually write about it later either…hahaha. I think the more hilarious part was the doctor finishing, telling me to get dressed and then proceeding to tell me that I am small, but that I have enough material that he will not need a skin graft from another part of my body. The irony is that I’m actually larger than the average human size, so again, deep inside, I’m chuckling about the whole thing. Most guys would be humiliated by someone saying they are “small” but for me, it doesn’t bother me at all. The smaller, the better. In fact, just gone would be the best. Ha-ha.
So we wrapped up the exam and consultation and he answered all my questions and then I was led back to the waiting area where I waited for my driver to come and take me back to the hotel. Again, more traffic, but it was quickly over with before I knew it.
I got back to my room and took care of some more things that I needed to do and then I ordered lunch, which was a coke and chicken broth. Filling but not very appetizing. I’m definitely going to lose weight while I’m here. I ate it and continued working and unpacking and going through the tons of emails and social network notifications that accrued overnight. At that point I was tired so I laid down for a nap. 4 hours later I woke up. Yeesh. I woke up, got back into the swing of things and kept myself occupied until my friend showed up at around 11:30pm.
Overall, the day was pretty uneventful, if not amusing, and I expect tomorrow to be more exciting as well as give me a few opportunities to get out and see more than just my hotel (though I should be resting so I’m ready to go for surgery).
Thailand – A Journey
Normally I only post a blog post on Mondays and Thursdays because I don’t have the time to write every day and there are some days that are just not good for getting people’s attention. However, even on that schedule, I don’t always post consistently.
For this series, I will post a little more often for a few reasons:
1. I’ll have a lot more personal time to sit and think and write
2. This is an important journey for me and I want to chronicle as much of it as I can.
So with that being said, this introductory post will be very G rated and explain a lot of why I’m in Thailand, as well as begin a series of what my life will consist of over the next few weeks. After this post, I will warn you of the content of a given post in case you’re squeamish, or simply don’t want to read anything that goes beyond a G or PG rating (not bad stuff, just a lot of medical information).
Today begins my journey in Thailand where I am here so that I can complete a surgery. Which surgery you ask? THAT surgery. Yeah, it’s THAT surgery. I’m not sure what to call it because it has so many names. SRS (sex reassignment surgery), GRS (gender reassignment surgery), GCS (gender confirming surgery), etc.
I’m big on words and their meanings and so for me, I have always swayed back and forth between SRS (sex reassignment surgery) and GRS (genital reconstruction surgery). The problem I have with SRS is that sex is something that is defined by the powers that be based on what is between our legs. For the vast majority (we’re talking like 98%+ of the world), this is fine, but it’s not accurate all the time and therefore isn’t a good description for what is happening for me. A doctor is able to state you have changed sex and therefore you are legally the opposite sex. That doesn’t require surgery at all.
I like GRS (genital reconstruction surgery) the best because it’s the most accurate description, even if not the most common use of the acronym, in my opinion. Sex reassignment doesn’t require surgery, just some paperwork. Genital reconstruction is more accurate. It is exactly what is happening for me. This is to help my brain see what it’s expecting based on it’s own wiring. Since the brain and body form at different times in-utero, there is a risk of non matching between the two. In my case, my body was constructed for male and my brain was wired for female. This creates the disconnect between the two as my software is looking for hardware that doesn’t exist. What I’m doing in Thailand is having the proper hardware installed for the software I was given (since we can’t rewrite the software).
Genital reconstruction is simply reconstructing the genitals, not the reproductive organs (God knows I don’t need that, I have enough kids). It’s also not the vague label of gender confirmation surgery, as someone who suffers from social dysphoria may simply want face surgery to help them blend better into society as a way to confirm their gender. Gender reassignment surgery is also not a good label because we are not reassigning our genders, that is what was always real that we pretended wasn’t. If anything, we would call it gender non-faking surgery and really that doesn’t require surgery, just start being you.
So I’m in Thailand for genital reconstruction surgery to relieve pain and suffering caused from a mismatch of body construction to brain wiring that, for now with all we know medically, is hardwired and can not be rewired. This is one of the final steps to relieving my body dysphoria so I can live a better quality of life.
I’ve done my best to relieve my social dysphoria by expressing myself as I see me, instead of how the world sees me. I am no longer concerned with what others think of me. A nervous breakdown and resulting therapy have helped in these areas. I also changed my name to match the way I see myself as I didn’t believe my name was a good fit for how I saw myself, who I am. All this combined has removed a lot of anxiety in the realm of social interaction with the rest of the world.
I’ve done my best to relieve my mental dysphoria. This was accomplished by diagnostic treatment where the theory was that my brain was wired as female and thus expecting female hormones in order to run properly. This was confirmed with each instance of introducing estrogen to my body and removing testosterone. Diagnostically, each time the estrogen was removed and testosterone reintroduced, extreme depression set in. This depression was not situational as there were no situations that would cause it, other than the removal of medication, which was for surgical purposes directly related to a transsexual transition.
This journey has been a long one (over 2 years to date), and I couldn’t be happier. Here’s to a future where my gender dysphoria (social, mental, and body) will be eradicated and my life healed, allowing me to be a more authentic, whole creation, who will be a more effective example of God’s love for each and every one of us. As Jesus said in John 9, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.” Praise be to God for my life, and His works displayed in me.
Levels of Acceptance
I am still sitting in awe of the weekend I had, the people I got to see, and finally being free to be me, with said people, for the first time.
Saturday, my high school graduation class celebrated 20 years since we graduated. It was a wonderful event at a local venue owned by one of our classmates. Our student council president helped organize the event and it went off without any problems.
As wonderful as the event was orchestrated and performed, that is not what got to me the most. What got to me was watching people interact with me for the first time as my true self. It was something that was truly amazing because I really wasn’t sure what to expect. For all I knew, I could’ve ended up dead in an alley.
Lucky for me, that wasn’t the case. In fact, just the opposite was true. I was embraced with loving arms from people who know me from Facebook, people who had interacted with me in the last year, and people who haven’t seen me in 10 or even 20 years.
All of this got me thinking about the different levels of acceptance I have experienced during the last 2 years of my life. I have been completely rejected and called names like crazy, disturbed, demon-possessed, delusional, and more. I’ve been ignored as people move on, silently refusing to even talk to me anymore. I’ve been told that I’m wrong, but I’m free to live my own life. I’ve been tolerated as I move through transition, and I’ve been embraced, loved on, and told just how beautiful I am.
Ironically, I’ve seen so much more of the latter level than I expected and I would say less than 20% of all the other levels. That, in and of itself, is mind boggling to me. The kicker of all of it is that the very ones who have rejected me are the ones who are commanded to love on me.
So at my 20 year class reunion, I was hugged, told how beautiful I am, how happy people are for me, how they are proud of me for being myself, and how they wished me good luck as I reach out for the new milestone I am embarking on right now. I was authentic. I was me. I also found out that I actually know how to dance and I really do enjoy doing it. Perhaps it’s time for some real dance lessons…lol.
Here’s to another 20 years of living authentically with new found friendships, with old friends, in a new stage of life.
Carpe Diem.
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Shedding Shadows 