Grief

Grief is a part of our lives. As transgender women and men most of us at some point grieve the loss of our previous gender. Others, not so much.

As I have written, my deceased wife of twenty five years was keenly into celebrating Christmas. In fact, she would have rooms dedicated to the holiday spirit. Including animated figures all the way to collector Christmas villages. We had fourteen foot ceilings and a twelve foot gigantic tree.

All of this led up to the main holiday itself. For it, we had three main gift giving activities. Later in life as she started to grudgingly support my cross dressing, we had our own little special gift swap. Specifically for my feminine self. Of course it quickly became my favorite of all the gifting going on.

As I fast forward this post to Christmas eve this year, it was a very sad time for me. Being me, I tried to hold my feelings in as I watched (yet again) one of my favorite Christmas movies “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Along the way I have learned to curtail many of my feelings around Liz concerning my previous wife Cindy. In most cases this works fairly well. In this case it didn’t.

I was feeling so bad I couldn’t hide it and Liz kept asking why. Unfortunately I have carried the male tendency with me to never show emotion. Of course hormone replacement therapy has helped me to cry and feel emotions, in some cases I am still a rock.

Finally yesterday morning I figured out the reason I was feeling so emotionally poor was I had never allowed myself to properly grieve…